


Chasing Tail

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien anatomy, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bittersweet Ending, Dual Genitalia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Let the little guy be the big damn hero, M/M, Mutual Pining, Overcoming past trauma, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Rocket has some serious body issues, Rocket to the rescue!, Secret Crush, Self-Hatred, Sex involving a raccoon, Sincere apologies to the Gunn/Rooker syndicate, Slow Burn, Suicide, Team as Family, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-01-20 07:37:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 49,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12428010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: The long and convoluted tail [sic] of how Yondu Udonta rode the Rocket.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Inspired by the _incredible_ oneshot 'Just Because I Call You Up' by Polaris! I've been interested in this pairing for aaaaages - it was the n#1 thing that struck me about the film! As I'm very picky about content (i.e., gimme dat sweet bottom!Yondu)... Best make my own! So sit back, relax, and enjoy. You're in for a very long ride.**

“Hey, kid. Come to pay yer respects?”

“You ain't dead, and I ain't no kid, old man.” Rocket hopped onto the bed, after a brief check to make sure no one was watching. Weren't nothing more demeaning than scrambling for what most folks could comfortably sit on. But the  _Quadrant_ didn't come equipped with pull-out stools. He made do, like he always did – and if Yondu laughed, Rocket would pluck that crest out of his head and cock his leg on it.

Yondu didn't laugh. Nor did he offer to help, and Rocket hated the disappointed droop of his tail.

“Not that you didn't do yer damned best to die out there,” he continued, punching Yondu in the knee. “I ain't forgiving you for that, by the way. Quill and Kraglin mighta sobbed their eyes out over your sorry hide, but don't expect the same from me.”

Yondu smirked. He looked regal, in a battered sort of way – bruised and tatty with frostbite, an old pirate king who'd been claimed by the aether and spat back out again. Like something from a spacefarer's legend.

Only most legends didn't detail the recovery process. A half-dozen monitor feeds tracked Yondu's heartbeat, keeping tabs on the oxygen in his lungs and the haemoglobin in his blood stream. The mask covering the lower half of his face was filmy from his breath.

“Thank flark,” he drawled, flashing teeth through the plastic. “Was runnin' out of decent conversations to have with myself. C'mon now, Rat. Whas eatin' ya so much you had to come pester yer old uncle Yondu?”

That, for a start. Rocket tried not to cringe. But animal instinct ran deep, and he had little say over the way his ears flattened and his tail puffed like a cat's.

“I ain't yer goddamn kid,” he muttered, sliding for the bed's edge. The sheets caught on his claws: a lightweight hobble that he viciously kicked free. “Forget it. Shouldn't have come -”

Yondu's hand grazed his arm. It didn't latch on, drag him back, hold him down - but Rocket flinched anyway, just in case. 

Yondu's hand retreated.

“Wassup?” he said instead.

Shit. No chance to spin a lie. Rocket ran an automatic calculation for the probability of him bolting before Yondu could whistle. Then he remembered the arrow had broken, so that was redundant anyways.

He needn't have worried. Yondu shifted higher – mistake – then, rather than continuing his fatherly interrogation, he winced and clutched at his chest.

The fit struck hard and fast. Harsh coughs, wracking coughs. Wet and crackly. Yondu took each convulsion like a blow: punched back against the headboard, knees drawn to his chest, shoulders quaking, ribs heaving. navy-faced with spittle shining on his chin.

As for Rocket? Rocket thanked flark Blue hadn't held his breath.

He and Peter punctured Ego's atmosphere fast, slingshotting into the black. If Yondu didn't exhale, his lungs would've ruptured inside him. Luckily, they'd been spared that horror show.

He'd suffered one hell of a frost-searing though. Bubbles burst in his depressurizing blood, worse than any case of the Bends. There'd been scarring and necrosification, and a lattice of minor blood vessels in his chest popped, splat-splat-splat, like blisters being poked by a pin.

Rocket didn't know what those blood vessels were called. He fixed machines, not men – no matter how much he wanted to.

“Augh – hell – Rat...”

Yondu might not be enough of a dick to manhandle him, but Rocket was an a-hole through and through. By the time Yondu recovered, creaking painfully upright and wiping the haze from his eyes, the Guardians' second smallest member was nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

Old uncle Yondu.

_Old uncle Yondu._

Like Rocket was of Groot's age, or Peter's maturity. Both smarted. How he set off Yondu's parental drive, he had no idea, but it was the last thing he wanted.

Rocket worked furiously, wrenching cabling from the wing laid out on his workbench. They'd returned to Berhert for the _Milano's_ remains – upon which their overtaxed jump drive fritzed with a mechanical belch, and they sailed merrily on their own momentum into the asteroid-strewn chasms of No Man's Space.

Peter had been reluctant to cannibalize his 'bird. However, it wasn't as if he had much choice. Either Rocket fixed the jumper and hopped them all to Knowhere before their air cycling filters crusted and their food supplies ran dry, or he didn't. As usual, the pressure was on him to save the day. Also as usual, no one was grateful.

“How we doing?” called Peter. He announced his entry into the disused hangar, rapping on the airlock's frame. There was an arrow hole in it. It stopped smoldering a while back, before they arrived in Ego's airspace, but Rocket still found himself glancing at it occasionally, lining up his sight. If you got the right angle, you could see through the matching fissures beyond, an enfilade of peep-holes that spanned the entire length of the lower deck.

Impressive toy, Blue had there. Shame it snapped. But Rocket couldn't concentrate on non-essential repairs, not until he'd clawed them back from this brink.

Sure, the danger wasn't _imminent._ They had a month on the clock before their pantry depleted (so long as they were sensible, and adhered to the ration plan Gamora drew up, working through the perishables before starting on the long-lives). None of them looked forwards to eating dry porridge oats and drinking recycled piss, but it would keep them alive.

“'We',” Rocket muttered, elbow deep in the wing. He clawed out another handful. The 'bird was too far gone for him to be careful; he snapped copper strands from their mooring, and relished the sharp intake of breath from behind. “Which one of us's gonna be washing gunk outta his fur for the next week?”

“Be _gentle_ with her! Sheesh, Rocket. Have a little respect for another man's ship!”

“You wanna stay here until you choke on yer own breath? Because I can be _gentle_ with her then, if so. Just might not get the jump drive fixed until after we're all dead.”

“Hey, carbon dioxide sinks. You'll be first to go.”

“And Groot'll be partying it up over our corpses. Fuck off if you ain't gonna help, Quill.”

Footsteps approached. Rocket didn't bother to look up. His fur prickled, needles jabbing into his cybernetics. They reminded him how thin his skin had been stretched, to account for the elongation of his hind legs and the unnatural curvature of his spine.

Blue's fault, of course. He was to blame for the jumpiness. Most things were Blue's fault nowadays, from the way Rocket's cock kept unsheathing at inopportune moments to how his paws and nose sweated like a dog's on a hot day: the bestial equivalent of a blush.

No, not _bestial_. Just because he had the body of an animal it didn't mean he thought like one. So why, why in hell, could he feel the flickers of an oncoming rut?

They dampened his rut on HalfWorld. The scientists had no interest in reproductive capabilities. After the jailbreak, when Rocket shivered on the floor of his stolen ship and suffered every symptom of withdrawal in a stinking, chunder-sodden carousel, the rut almost finished him off. He had an album of unfond memories: humping joysticks and letting the buzzing bone in his dick lay on the lift-off button for so long that he'd accidentally bypassed his own lock-controls and blasted for the stratosphere mid-orgasm. It was dirty and demeaning, and while he enjoyed himself at the time – Quill's ship wasn't the only one that shouldn't be observed under black lights – he hated every moment where his body wrested control from his mind.

Rocket was designed for functionality. His libido didn't hamper him – although it slunk around the edges of his thoughts, corrupting their logical flick from one diagram to the next. His paws worked on automatic, yanking out clod after clod of circuitry like he was pulling offal from venison on a butcher's slab.

Peter squatted besides him. “How can I help?”

“Give me your zune for an hour and fuck off, that's how.”

“What? I – no!” Peter clutched the little black box, which he'd taken to stashing in his jacket pocket and stroking when Yondu's name came up in conversation. It did that a lot – mostly when Peter and Kraglin got into one of their shouting matches over whether or not they should call Stakar.

Kraglin said it'd be the right move. He insisted Stakar would forgive Yondu, if he knew how he'd sacrificed himself to save the galaxy.

 _I was young an' greedy_ replayed in Rocket's mind on repeat. He thoughts of Amulax batteries and winking with one eye, and getting his whole team in shit because it was better to be a trouble-making pest than to fade into the background: their talking monkey, their engineer, their pet. He understood that. Understood _Yondu._ But would Stakar? They couldn't count on it.

Thankfully, Peter vetoed all outgoing comms. They had enemies, he had been quick to remind them at the so-called 'family meeting' (Yondu excluded. Old git was passed out and near-unresponsive at the time.) A comm call could be intercepted, and traced. Rocket would have a hard enough time patching them a functioning jump drive out of junk; fashioning new engines, shielding and an oxygenerator after they were caught in crossfire between the Sovereign and the Kree might be beyond his capabilities.

And so here they sat. Comm relay disengaged. Relying on Rocket's macguyvering, as per frickin' usual.

Sighing, Rocket shoved his latest bundle of electronic gizzards and gizmos onto the heap which he'd privately deemed as 'beyond salvage'. It was by far the largest.

“It helps me concentrate. You want this done? I need music.”

“I could stay here with it,” Peter suggested, circling his thumb over the shiny black case. “Y'know, I can be quiet -”

“Quill, you can't keep your mouth shut for five minutes on a stealth mission.”

“Pot, kettle.”

“Shaddup. You're proving my point. I need music, and I need some freakin' _solly-tude._ Not necessarily in that order. So drop the music box and go, or take it. That's the only way you'll be helping me.”

Harsh, he knew. If Yondu were here, he'd be shaking his head. Maybe he'd give him another lecture on the perils of pushing away those you love – because one day you pushed too hard, the rubber band snapped, and they never bounced back.

Yondu wasn't here. That was the problem.

Quill frowned. “Buddy, c'mon. We've talked about your attitude - “

Rocket restrained himself from hurling his wrench, but only because he needed it. The joy of bruising Quill's skull wasn't worth the dent. “Please,” he gritted, reaching into the hollowed wing. He burrowed into the _Milano's_ charred barrel until all he could smell was stale machine oil and the burnt-hair odor of what had once been a fuse box. “Keep talking. It's always been my dream to suffocate.”

Peter held up his hands – not that Rocket could see them. “Okay, okay. I'm going. Keep your fur on.”

“Zune?”

Peter dithered, then came to a decision. He placed it on the ground with the same reverence with which he'd handled the Walkman, whose crushed fragments had long-since been incinerated, ashes on Ego's planet-sized pyre. “If there's a speck of engine grease on here -”

“You best set it playing then. I'm gonna leave hand prints all over the ship.”

“Sure.” Peter didn't fumble with the new controls. He'd spent hours fiddling with the thing, since Yondu and him were dragged from the airlock and Kraglin placed the little device in Peter's still-shaking palms. Hell, he probably spent more time listening to the music than with Yondu.

Rocket couldn't begrudge him that. Stuff had been said, as the pair of them floated in the black, fully expecting only one would survive. Stuff that they were both no doubt still processing. Sometimes it was easier to block out the galaxy than acknowledge it. In lieu of a sensory deprivation chamber, shut eyes and a blaring zune sufficed.

But Rocket did hoard that titbit in the same way he hoarded all sorts of petty little grievances – the way Kraglin was the one to bring Yondu his meals, but didn't seem to have noticed hot food hurt his throat and the bastard was simply being too stubborn to let on; the way the others seemed unfazed by Yondu's glares like he'd been neutered by the loss of his arrow; the way Mantis laid hands on him towards the end of his coma when his death-deep sleep had been interrupted by dreams.

To soothe, she'd claimed. But Rocket hadn't forgotten the horror on her face when Yondu lay flat-out again, snoring in weak little rasps, his lungs half-deflated and his eyelids scarred from the ice. What she'd felt in his mind, he hadn't asked. But he hoped it put her off ever doing that again. Some nightmares were best suffered alone.

“What tune?” Quill asked, scrolling through the library. “I got Alice Cooper, I got Led Zeppelin, I got Queen – think you'd like them. I got Tina Turner, I got C-Cat Stevens, I got Gloria Gaynor -”

“C-Cat Stevens?” Rocket mocked. Quill's sigh was heavy enough to ruffle the hairs on the back of his neck.

“I'll just pop it on shuffle.”

“Atta boy.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Seven cycles. That was how long it took for Rocket to build a routine.

Rouse, yawn, stomp to the showers and crank out his miniscule allowance of recycled water, thanking the stars he didn't have much to suds up. Then to the kitchens, where he'd skulk until Drax stopped lamenting the size of his portions, and how he couldn't be expected to maintain his muscle mass on under five thousand calories a day.

Big sob. Rocket never thought of himself as _too small,_ preferring to insist everyone else was overgrown. Drax, whose arms looked like he blew them up every morning with a tyre pump, was the archetypal example.

Breakfast was a practical affair. Rocket nipped in, grabbed a protein cake and one of the anti-scurvy pills Gamora had discovered while ransacking the medbay, and went on his way. No time for chat. He was a man on a mission – after polishing off his cake and snaffling the crumbs from his whiskers, he sauntered to the engine rooms, to swear and gripe and unpick knotted wire until his ligaments ached, where they grafted muscles to his steel-tipped bones.

Sometimes he worked to the beat of the zune. Sometimes he didn't. Whether Peter loaned it to him depended on his mood. Rocket hadn’t been lying when he said it helped. The thrum of Terran guitars was conducive to rhythmic, repetitive work, like galley drums from the days before space travel, when ships floated on water rather than between stars.

The lyrics were less helpful. They snagged on his mind, and he would pause, sometimes for the duration of a whole chorus, while _Wild horses couldn't drag me away_ thundered around his head.

He worked until his eyes drooped and his whiskers shrivelled and the schematic chips jammed in his brain like graphics cards began to pulse and ache. Then and only then did Rocket call it a day. His mind swam viscous, a syrup of Halfworld-cant and engineering jargon. Rocket dusted off, wiping excess grease on an increasingly filthy rag, and trudged to fulfil his mandatory hour of Groot-enrichment before bed.

Mandatory schmandatory – Rocket wouldn't be there if he didn't want to be. He was happy to spend time with the little guy. Truly he was. He loved it when he tottered over to show Rocket his latest artwork – murals of M-ship paint smeared on the _Milano’s_ scrapped hull plates – or gabbled “I am Groot” so fast the meaning dissolved and they were both left sniggering.

But no amount of laughter could fill the hole in his chest. It was different to the hole Yondu described, carved by years of abuse. This hole was shaped like a flora colossus. The Groot perched on the floor in front of him, chattering about how he'd escaped Gamora's babysitting shift and run rampant through the vents until he crashed, dusty and coughing, in Yondu's medbay, would never fill it, no matter how much he grew.

Rocket held up a paw. “Wait. You went into the medbay? Groot! That's a sterile zone!”

“I am Groot.”

“No, Groot – you _reproduce asexually._ There's a _difference._ ” He frowned. “You've been eavesdropping on Quill again, haven't you? 'Sterile' don't sound the same in Xandarian...”

“I am Groot!”

“You go before he starts smooching Gamora? Well, that’s something to be thankful for. But look, Groot – about Yondu. I know you wanna be around him -”

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah, yeah. Me too. Just. Not in the same way. But Groot, he's in the medbay for a reason. His immune system's shot to shit, and we only have so many antiviral drugs...”

“I am Groot.” _._

“Yeah, I'm sure he does like seeing you. But this is for the bastard's own good -”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, now you're just lying.” Rocket crossed his arms, tail jutting out at an angle. _L_ _onely?_ Yondu would never admit such a thing. Not even to Groot. “What've I told you about lying to me?”

“I am Groot, I am Groot!”

“Kraglin. His name's Kraglin. Not ‘hairyface’. And he doesn’t visit him because he’s embarrassed about the mutiny, which yeah. Serves him right.”

“I am Groot.”

“I know it's mean! But Yondu's still got Peter, right?”

“I am Groot...”

“Of course they freak out whenever Peter calls him dad. Wouldn’t you?” Rocket thinned his eyes at him. “What're you trying to say, little man?”

A shrug, a too-innocent blink.

“I am Groot.”

“What do _I_ think you're trying to say? I think you're far smarter than you let on, tyke.”

“I am Groot?”

“Okay! Okay. Sheesh, you run a hard bargain. But I'll go visit him, I promise.” Rocket unrolled, checking his chronometer and stifling a yawn. His tail wrapped sleepily around his legs. It tugged on the slit he had to snip into the seat of every child-sized jumpsuit he owned. “Past your bedtime, kiddo. C'mon. I'll drop you with Gamora on the way.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Lonely_ ,” Rocket muttered scathingly to himself as he strutted down the corridors, scratching his balls and yawning and bouncing off the occasional wall. He nodded at Drax. The big guy was making his way towards the Bridge to take the late watch, and from the looks of him, he'd rather be prone on a mattress. “Blue? As if. He don't got a soft bone in his body. And he don't need you. You _know_ it...”

“You're talking to yourself,” Drax noted.

Rocket's grin was all teeth. “Senility kicking in, I guess.”

“Senility? I thought that afflicted the elderly.”

“Yeah well.” Rocket paused, one paw on the door of the medbay. The glass was too high for him to see through; his little fingers splayed on metal. The salt-and-pepper fur between his claws had been increasing over the past couple years. It showed no signs of stopping. By the time he hit his expiration date, he'd have silver socks. “I don't got that long a lifespan anyway.”

He pushed the door open and went in. First thing he saw? Yondu's feet, poking from under the blanket.

He wasn't tall, as humanoids went. Of course, everyone was a giant to Rocket. But he'd noticed how much lower Yondu's head bobbed than Kraglin's and Peter's. The prosthetic gave him a boost, but he was by no means large enough to exceed the capacity of the thermoregulation blanket they'd found for him, to keep his temperature in check while various cocktails of anti-space-exposure drugs did their work.

A smile threatened Rocket's lips as he tiptoed around the bed. Yondu had bundled the covers over his head in an effort to block out the medbay lights. He was sleeping – on his back, because that kept his various wires and IV tubes in alignment – and snoring something mighty as a result of it. The sheet puffed and shrunk over his slack-jawed mouth.

“You look like a morgue body, all bundled up,” Rocket said. Not that Yondu could hear him. He squinted at the lights instead. Eesh. ‘Bright’ was an understatement. He'd have to work out some sort of voice-activated switch; expecting a man to sleep under these was ridiculous.

Corralling his baggy brain, he set himself to the task. It was in part out of a genuine desire to help – but mostly to stop him ogling while Yondu wasn't awake to snap at him for it. 

Rut instincts broiled, hot as a supergiant. They thrummed out from the struts at the base of his spine. His cock slipped out, a slippery pink spike, painting a wet stripe along his gusset. Rubbing his thighs didn't suck it back into its sheathe. But the friction sharpened his mind to the point where he could focus, hone in on the job at hand.

Not on how Yondu's legs were splayed, opening a dark hole under the sheet around his ankles. Not how the blanket was thin enough that, if Rocket stood on a chair, he'd be able to see his dick.

No. He wasn't perving on a sleeping guy. It wasn't fair. Plus, he had to fix this light; and anyway, even if Yondu _was_ conscious to return the leching, why the hell would he? Whatever Rocket was, Yondu wasn't into it. No one was.

It was that simple. You could give him all the guff you wanted about _sentience_ and _equal rights among higher-functioning life forms._ But at best he was a deformed creature to be pitied, and at worst a freak. The folks who wanted to bang him got off on that, and if Rocket didn’t want pity-sex, he wanted to be a fetish even less.

This was stupid, he thought, pushing a trolley of medical equipment to the wall and scrambling on top of it, stretching for the light switch. An idiotic little crush. No wonder Yondu treated him like a kid. Rocket was three quarters of the way to his expiration date – and as jaded and cynical as one would expect as a result. But here he was, acting like a teenager.

Experience. That was what he lacked. While he'd had bouts of rut-induced madness before, they'd never coincided with genuine _affection_ for someone. And, unlike when he and Yondu stared at one another on the same level, surrounded by the clanks and groans as the _Quadrant’s_ Bridge dais warped back into shape after suffering seven hundred jumps in a row, Rocket never dared dream that what he felt might be reciprocated.

Rocket was reading too much into it. He needed to dislodge these rose-tinted goggles before he welded them to his muzzle. It was only a matter of time before he did or said something he regretted – like nuzzling his face against Yondu's groin, inhaling that rich Ravager stink through the sheet _._ On that day, he’d lose something priceless. In this galaxy, friendship was rarer than adamantium, more precious than gold.

Rocket fashioned a rudimentary dimmer function out of three depleted batteries and a snapped scalpel. He slapped it on the circuit-board with a grin. No point turning off the electrics. Rigged to his left-most claw tip was a slim green wire, designed to act as an earth cable. So long as Rocket kept his pinky in place, there was no danger of frying.

“Low,” he said, testing, and fist-pumped when his handiwork paid off.

Work was a good distraction. His cock re-sheathed, slime drying to crust. It crumbled into the fur around his groin, crackly and matted, in need of a thorough groom.

That urge was like a crinkle in his mind. The longer he left it, the steeper that crinkle got, pushing up like a fold mountain until he was left twitching, unable to think of anything but dragging his tongue over the fur. Sometimes he liked to test himself, see how long he could go before resisting any longer threatened to drive him insane. It was vaguely scientific, vaguely masochistic. He'd shower instead, as often as he could with their frugal water allowances. But while that put the yearn off for a few hours, when it skulked back it came stronger than ever.

Like hell was he dropping trou and licking his own balls though. Not while Yondu was in the room.

“Rat?”

Perfect timing.

Rocket looked around, snapping the panel into place. His eyes adapted to the nocturnal light settings with an audible whir. Yondu wasn't so lucky. He sat – he was allowed to do that now. Even permitted to waddle to and from the bathroom on his lonesome rather than with an escort. Man must be ecstatic. Folks like them never took bodily autonomy for granted.

Yondu groped the darkness, then the stubble ring around his jaw. Rocket wondered how far down it went. Yondu wasn't the most hirsute; that much the thin sheet revealed. But he might have a treasure trail for Rocket to roll against, grinding his scent glands over the curls until Yondu was claimed as _his_ …

“Here,” he said gruffly. “I fixed your lights.” He hopped off the table. His hindleg clipped a tray. It bore a variety of instruments – instruments he didn't like to look at unless it was purely pragmatic, seeing them as potential tweezers or toothpicks. Just medical supplies; nothing to worry about. But some memories ran deep. Rocket flinched from the clattering cascade.

“Shit. I goddit, damn-”

“Can wait for mornin'.” Yondu's rumble was deeper than ever, hoarse like he'd swallowed a burr. Rocket watched him yawn, molars dull in the depleted light. He didn't know if he was furious at the fond tendrils wrapping his heart, or terrified by them. It was like he'd ingested a Groot spore on Xandar and let it gestate in his chest. Those vines only clenched tighter when Yondu scowled. “C'mere, Rat. Can't see shit.”

“That's the whole point. You realize I made it darker so you can sleep, not to wake you up?”

Yondu yawned again, jaw popping. His fangs, rusted and rotting alike, glinted with spit. “I ain't offerin' twice, y'know. Geddup here or geddout.”

“Sure,” said Rocket weakly. He chose the first option.

 

* * *

 

Yondu's offer wasn't an instigation. Rocket told himself he wasn't disappointed, and hoped it would substitute for the real thing.

The old guy was still in recovery. Even fighting fit, he was hardly the spryest. Of course, given the expiration date stamped on the top of his spine, neither was Rocket – not that his hormones had gotten the message.

His dick peeped out of hiding again, a shy pink worm nosing through fur.

“Okay,” he grumbled, crossing his arms and feigning nonchalance. He perched a calculated foot from Yondu with his tail wafting over the edge of the bed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t far enough that he couldn’t smell him – but at least he wasn’t within accidental-fondling range. “I'm up. And Blue, you look ready to drop. Need me to sing you a lullaby?”

Yondu chuckled. Rocket heard himself echo him. How long had it been, since he shared a proper laugh with someone he trusted without question? How long, since he lost Groot?

Four months, three weeks, nineteen cycles, two standard hours and just under a minute. Rocket was good with numbers. Far too good, sometimes.

Yondu might not be able to make out more of his face than a furry isosceles, but Rocket saw the hand when it shifted towards him. He moved to intercept it, angling so Yondu would cup his cheek rather than prod him in the eye. “Hey, Rat.”

“Y-yeah?” His voice did not quake. It _did not._

The hand didn't linger; it patted twice and left. Simple, comradely. Dare Rocket say it – _fatherly_. Dammit. “Cheers for the light, kid. Damn thing was givin' me a splitter of a headache.”

“Yeah well. I suppose it has to be kept like that. Most medbays work around the clock.” Rocket tapped his chin, not thinking about the words so much as _reciting_ them, information gleaned from the chips in his mind. “Most berths in these places have an opaque pod around them that seals 'em off and stops cross-contamination between patients, and – and…” While it might be soothing for Rocket to witter about basic ship functions, it probably didn’t hold nearly as much interest for his audience. Rocket groaned. “Why'm I tellin' you this? You're a Ravager captain. You know how a goddamn medbay operates.”

For some reason, Yondu's smirk didn't put him on the defensive. Rocket pretended it did, because it was expected of him – but the knowledge he'd made him laugh not once but _twice_ in the same amount of minutes was almost enough to smother the nasty twist in his chest.

In the end though, the nasty twist won.

Yondu saw him as a friend. A pseudo-son; a watered-down version of Peter who _understood_ him in those dark and gritty places where Peter couldn't hope to connect. That was all.

“Hey,” he snapped, prodding Yondu in the chest, avoiding the adhesive pads. Those were suckered across Yondu's pectorals. Now he'd dragged the coverlet from his face, it pooled under his nipples, revealing that he was as hairless there as he was scraggly around the chin. If Rocket squinted, he could make out a line, like the slice of a scar that never quite healed. It looped across his ribs, loose skin sagging beneath it. “What you laughing at me for, huh Blue? Something funny?”

“Just thinkin' how good it is to talk to someone and not have 'em treat me like some -”

“Some broken thing." He knew that feeling well enough. Yondu nodded.

“Ain't gonna need no lullaby if ya keep talkin’." His grin slunk from one ear to the other.

Fuck, but Rocket wanted to kiss it. Not that he was designed for such things. His incisors would clonk on Yondu's, and it would hurt, and it'd taste gross on both accounts because for all his teasing, Rocket hadn't exactly been encouraged to brush teeth from a young age neither.

Rocket’s hands were designed to interpret signals from his brain chips without him putting in a single thought. Data converted to action as easily as his heart pumped or his lungs filled. If he kept fantasizing about this, he'd do it.

“I'll be sure to keep the conversation scintillating then."

“Naw. Jus' rather have ya up here than scrabblin' around down there in the dark, makin' my crest go haywire.” Rocket refused to squeak when one of Yondu's arms – big arms, brawny and blue and striped with scarring – curled around him. He drew him the rest of the way, until he leaned against a belly large enough for him to coil up on it like a cushion.

Rocket’s hormones took the opportunity to hijack that image, and make that belly round with his children, rather than beer and age. Ick.

“This is cosy,” he said – because he was Rocket, snark-a-holic, and that was the sort of thing Rockets said. In truth, he'd rather enjoy the contact for as long as it lasted: eyelids quivering closed and nostrils flaring to absorb Yondu’s essence, the smell of his skin and his breath and his far-too-close groin.

Antiseptic swabs had been passed over his pulse points before the IVs were fastened. But under their tang, Yondu was a well-stirred aromatic cauldron. There were too many scents to parse, for anyone without enhanced senses. But Rocket could identify Yondu’s sweat from his natural skin-grease, as well as the sour spruce of yaka – a mineral stench, rich like dirt after rain. The reek of his leathers clung to him even after a fortnight of bed rest.

Rocket knew he'd have been shoved away if there was anyone else in the room. But for now, Yondu huffed and ran the backs of his fingers over the ridge of one fluffy ear.

“Shaddup, Rat.”

Rocket's leg ticked. Yondu didn't mention it. He shifted his scritching to Rocket's chin. When Rocket started purring, lids sliding half-lidded as he rocked against those blunt blue nails, Yondu didn't mock him. Didn't do much at all, besides murmuring 'sleep now, kiddo' and dropping his implant-laden head to fill the corresponding dent in the pillow.

The words matched what Rocket had told Groot earlier. He drifted uneasily away, slumped against Yondu’s hip, and buried his nose in the soft muscle of his side in the hopes he’d see him in his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So I finished writing and this baby will be approx. 50 000 words! Plenty to look forwards to. (And. Uh. I'm sorry in advance. 8I)**
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> **KUDOS & COMMENTS are what gives me motivation to edit! So pile 'em on, please :3**


	3. Chapter 3

“Well,” said Peter cheerfully, “this is cosy.”

Rocket groaned. “Already said that.” He rubbed his snout back and forth along Yondu's warm side. He hadn't slept all that much, in the end. Too busy keeping his cock in check, terrified that he'd wake up humping, Yondu's cherry-pink eyes crinkled with disgust.

Or worse, with _laughter._ The old sod enjoyed whatever comedy the galaxy tossed his way. What could be more hilarious, what more _hysterical,_ than a crabby puppy with a Napoleon complex grinding off against a gnarly blue space pirate, who'd been testing the durability of bedsprings across the length and breadth of their galactic quadrant since long before Rocket existed?

He wasn't a virgin. Not _quite._ Like he said – freaks with bestiality fetishes. Those were rife in the seedier haunts: Knowhere, Contraxia, Dizerall. If they got their rocks off on having his muzzle flush to their groin or his arm pumping in and out of them, fist clenched with a fury he couldn't express, who was Rocket to tell them otherwise?

It got him laid, when he wanted it. But most of the time, they didn't like it when he talked. They didn't want him to lay them down and kiss them and spend his time exploring, learning the gears and cogs of their body like his mechanic’s mind desired.

They wanted it rough and fast. All _baser instinct_ and _animal._ And while Rocket could fulfil those fantasies, digging into that portion of himself always left him a little shaken, a little bereft, washing the jizz from his fur under a crusty Knowhere faucet and wondering why his hands wouldn't stop trembling, when he could defuse bombs in quarter-G without so much as a shake.

The fact remained. The only folks who wanted to have their genitals anywhere near his were A-Grade douchebags. Yondu might be a dick, might have a sadistic streak that rivalled Rocket's own, and might be completely oblivious to what Rocket was nurturing for him, germinating in the bower of his chest. But he wasn't _that_ awful.

Rocket wouldn't love him if he was.

Dammit all to Niflheim. He'd caught himself in a paradox of his own invention. Only jackasses let Rocket fuck them, but Rocket didn't want to fuck a jackass. He wanted to fuck a big blue asshole (quite literally; their size difference was one concern among many). However, beneath the aggregated grit and hardship and scarification, Yondu was  _a good person._ He'd never get off on Rocket's freaky monster-paws skidding across his skin.

Yondu snored on. Oblivion was blissful, and Rocket envied him it. The brassy thunder ebbed, and Rocket found the whuffling that replaced it oddly soporific.

But Peter was here, which meant it was morning shift. He had a routine to get back to. One which didn't factor snuggle-time with Yondu.

He sat up, wriggling free with no little regret. Yondu shifted in his sleep. He hummed, flexing his hand as if confused where his heat source had gone. The coverlet twisted low on his hips. Quill watched the scene – from the way Rocket extracted himself, to the awkward pat he bestowed on Yondu's wrist and how he adjusted the sheet to keep him decent. A smile quirked his mouth.

Rocket levelled a claw, glad Peter had taken the chair so he could threaten him face to face. “If you wake him up -”

“I won't. Old git needs his beauty sleep.”

“Helluva lot of it for that face.”

“Heh.”

The zune was clipped to his pocket, a shiny black oblong. It exploded into a diagram of capacitors and circuitry if Rocket looked at it too long, like his brain was dissecting it without his permission. Peter made no move to offer it, and Rocket didn’t ask. He’d work without a soundtrack today. “So you don't think this is... weird?” he said, gesturing between himself and Yondu with admirable hope. “Y'know. Bedding down together.”

“Nah. We had dorm rooms on the _Eclector,_ but half the time me and Krags would crash in the captain's cabin. Nothing strange about guys being dudes.” Peter clucked his tongue, tugging the sheet to Yondu’s neck with unthinking ease. Rocket, who would get lost in it if he tried, tried not to feel redundant. “Plus these old ships have shitty insulation,” Peter continued. “It's warmth-sharing. Platonic, y'know?”

“Platonic,” Rocket muttered, rubbing the side of his face where the fur had flattened during the night. “Sure. Look, the shitty insulation's gonna get shittier if we sit still for too long. I gotta head to the engine rooms; get back to work.”

Peter nodded. He squinted at Rocket though, and much as he was loath to admit it, Quill _was_ a fair bit smarter than Rocket gave him credit for. He didn't confront him, as Rocket hopped off the bed, knee joints inflamed from a night spent curled semi-upright rather than out flat. They reminded him of his oncoming expiration date with every squeaky step.

“How do I turn the lights back up?” he asked once Rocket was on the threshold. Rocket didn't have the energy to feign irritation at the lack of a thank you.

“Say 'Lights up',” he said, and left.

 

* * *

 

Under a fortnight until their foodstock whittled to nothing. And, to make their odds that bit less favorable, another ship popped up on the radar. A ship that crept steadily towards them.

“Pirates,” said Peter, who had called an emergency meeting.

“Probably,” Kraglin agreed, conducting the holo-feeds like a spritely orchestra. The comms data consolidated in ribbons, rollercoastering around his head, directed by the twitch of his bony fingers. “Look – they're jamming communication. We oughta fire all as soon as they get within range.”

“No,” said Gamora, nodding to a readout in the lower right corner of the hologram. “Look here – they have exceptionally hardy shielding. There's a chance they'll survive, and then we'll have wasted our artillery.”

“So what, we wait for their pre-emptive strike? We don't know what guns they're packin’! I been flyin’ these routes decades now, and trust me when I say there’s a fair chance anyone we meet is lookin' to blow us apart and pick valuables from our wreckage, not board us.”

“We should be having this conversation in the medbay,” said Rocket. But he was on level with everyone else's knees. The debate flowed uninterrupted over the top of his head.

“I do not know much about ships,” said Gamora slowly. “But pirates tend to be rather... hodgepodge. Correct?” She nodded to the wall. It was pipe-studded. Each copper tube sported some form of puncture-patch, from where leaks had sprung and shots had gone wild during bouts of drunken target practice.

Kraglin and Quill huffed, but neither contradicted her.

“So, if they have amplified their shields enough to withstand a battery, there is a fair chance that they won't have invested in big guns? That their tactic is to board, subdue, and scupper from within? All the yaro root in one basket, so-to-speak.”

Peter nodded. “You've got a point. But c'mon. Think about it from their point of view.”

Drax turned a full circle, assessing the mess hall's overarching roof. “It is a big room.”

Rocket rolled his eyes. “Yes Drax, that's very nice.”

“No, listen to him. He's onto it. What were you saying Drax?”

“Before Rocket so rudely interrupted me -” Rocket scowled and scuffed his clawed toes in circles. Like they didn't do worse when it was his turn to speak. He'd never realized how much he missed Groot's height. Not that he'd used the guy as a glorified podium, but people took more notice when you were dictating from the shoulder of a seven-foot flora colossus. “-I was merely pointing out that this ship is a large one. Far bigger than the _Milano._ I would not, were I a pirate, board it unless confident I could handle the denizens aboard.”

Mantis shivered. “And there are only six of us.”

“Plus Groot and Yondu,” Rocket pointed out. Gamora was already shaking her head.

“Groot's staying out of this one. We endangered him far too much on Ego's planet. I won't put him in that position again.”

“He's tougher than you know.” But it wasn't an argument, and he put up his paws to show it when Gamora's glare honed like that of a falcon preparing to stoop. “What about Yondu?”

“Yondu's on bed rest. His arrow's broken – he can't fight.” Peter snapped the clasp on his gun belt, yanking it a notch tighter. “No running to daddy. We gotta deal with this ourselves.”

Rocket didn't even mock him for the 'daddy' thing. Not much.

He set traps. It was what he did best, after fixing engines and lusting after wrinkly blue pirates. “You know,” he told Kraglin and Peter, who had been enlisted to his service as the only other members of their crew with technological expertise. “If you fetch me their jump drive intact, I can get us moving again. So you ain’t allowed to blow them up. We also can't let them decouple, so – hey, pass me that quadrum polarizer, yeah?”

“This doohickey?”

“No, that one. Hell, you know the names for any of this stuff?”

Kraglin scowled. “No. I just know how to use it. Like any other rockhopper.”

“It's a miracle you've survived this long. Alright, back to the plan. When they dock, they'll aim for our biggest airlocks, and clamp on. That way they can send in a big boarding rush. They'll have a magnetic lock, plus a rubber seal grafted around the edges to keep it airtight. We need to make that seal a lot more secure than they'd intended, until we've worked our way through their crew and stripped their engines.”

Peter didn't bother with incredulity. He didn't question what Rocket was going to do, how he planned on pulling such a feat off.

“What do you need?” he asked instead.

Sometimes, Rocket very almost liked him. His black lips peeled up, revealing the glint of a tiny silver circuit embedded in his gum.

“I need you to give the ship a roll. I'll handle the rest.”

 

* * *

 

They hadn't adjusted their gravity core, so the ship’s undercarriage still registered as ‘down’. Rocket could scamper along the tunnel floors rather than dodging the assault course of wall-mounted pipes that funnelled plasma to the engines and Bridge, water to the faucets, and air to the oxygen scrubbers in the bilge.

It also meant Yondu hadn't fallen out of bed, which was a definite bonus.

The entire ship tilted ninety degrees. Their main airlock port was, for the time being, hidden. It looked like a desperate manoeuvre, a last-ditch attempt to stall. Pointless, of course – the enemy vessel would simply reroute and latch on with barely five minutes' delay.

But for those five minutes, the airlock was hidden behind their bulkhead. That gave Rocket a window of opportunity. He intended to capitalize on it.

Yondu was already sitting when Rocket entered. He frowned as Rocket bounded to the scanning system they'd plopped Yondu into when they first hauled him out the airlock, dripping frost and struggling to breathe, crystals forming in his airways and expanding in his tear ducts until they bled. It'd given them a rundown of his condition and how best to treat it. Without it, he'd have been past help. And now, it was going to save all of their lives.

“Where's the fire, Rat?”

Rocket pared the situation to its basic bulletpoints. “We're being boarded,” he said, prowling around the tube, occasionally dropping to all fours so he could squint at its base. “Hostile ship, won't respond to comms. Don't know numbers or artillery, or anything, much.”

The usual response would be fear – but Yondu was a Ravager captain. He tipped his head calculatingly, watching Rocket work. After locating the power pack, Rocket scooted halfway under the machine’s bulky body, stripping the box to its raw components.

Yondu sat up higher. “Why you makin' supermagnets, kiddo?”

Rocket couldn't be pissy about the _kiddo._ Not when adrenaline fizzled in every capillary, preparing him for the battle to come. “To stop them running away,” he said, and savored the throb in his chest when Yondu matched his grin.

That dropped quickly though, at Yondu's next request: “Gimme a gun.”

“You kidding? Look, I wanted you involved in the plotting because I thought you'd have some experience in that oh-so-ancient head of yours that might help -”

“Watch it, whippersnapper.”

“Hey, considerin’ how long I got left, I'm your age if not older. _You_ watch it.”

That took Yondu aback. Rocket didn’t want to see him piecing the puzzle-fragments together. He concentrated on heaping his magnets into the knapsack he'd stolen from Peter's closet (borrowed, although he doubted the idiot would see it like that). Thankfully, Yondu dismissed that line of interrogation.

“I ain't gonna go play hero,” he sneered, as Rocket checked the volt limit of the scanning unit and smirked to himself. They could double that in a localized ring around the airlock – or rather he could, if left alone for thirty seconds with a screwdriver and some copper wire. “Just wanna be sure that if some goon gets in here, I ain't laid out like -”

“Like an old man in a hospital bed?”

Yondu flipped him a one-fingered salute, which Rocket gladly returned. Seemed Terran expletive gestures rubbed off on the both of them. “I'll tell Peter to drop off a gun,” he said, packing the last of the plates into his bag and hefting it over one small shoulder. It was heavier than he was, but he'd been calibrated to lift weapons three times his size. It was a bit chunky to lug about, but he'd manage. “You ain't gonna need to use it though, old man. They're not getting this far.”

He imparted the message once he reached his crew. Peter nodded, already harried from performing safety checks on sixteen traps at once, all of which could very easily kill them instead of the interlopers. Rocket wasn't sure he'd heard, but he muttered something to Kraglin who muttered to Drax who muttered to Gamora who muttered to Mantis, and she scampered off to do his bidding. Meanwhile, Rocket snapped on his spacesuit and took his bag of magnets for a walk.

Deconstructing the scanner took two minutes. Reaching the main airlock – the only one large enough for a comparably-sized ship to clamp onto – another two. That left one on the chronometer, before that portion of the hull became visible to the hostiles. Rocket had to hurry. But he spared a second to cringe, at the fizzle of vac suit static against his fur.

He knew Yondu didn't blame him. That was okay. He blamed himself plenty for both of them. Why had he only brought three suits? He'd never factored on Peter's mask getting broken ( _stupid;_ being a walking bomb disposal unit meant planning for every eventuality). He'd certainly never foreseen Yondu’s sacrifice.

He remembered Yondu's voice, crackling over the comm as he admitted to Peter, to all of them, what he'd kept buried inside him, neglected for so long. It haunted Rocket, how close he’d come to losing him.

But he hadn’t. He fixed their tractor beam just in time, working so frantically that he dislocated a gear in his elbow. It twinged now, although the nanites in his blood had long since popped it back into place. That was the worst thing about being who he was, _what_ he was. The enhanced processing unit hacked into his brainstem was what made him useful. He was nothing without it. It  _was_ him, personality and sentience spliced to him by wires. And he hated it.

But if it would keep his friends alive? If it would keep Yondu safe?

Rocket gritted his teeth and opened the airlock.

Space always held a fascination for him. He hadn't seen much of the stars from his cage in the facility. When they took him out on field tests, the scientists tutted at themselves for giving him an oversized curiosity-processing core. He'd been kept blinkered so he wouldn't stop mid-defusion and stare up, up, up at the promise of freedom.

Space was so far away (twenty kliks, to be precise, from the moon's surface to the upper echelons of its atmosphere). For the longest of times, Rocket had convinced himself that freedom could be no more than a pipe-dream, a fantasy spun from the gas they were dosed with whenever they got rowdy.

Rocket snapped the last magnet into place, charging the plates to make them stick. Years ago, a long time before he was selected from his mother's squirming brood, a slave boy stood on an empty battlefield, gazing at the slew of constellations overhead and imagining much the same thing.

“Done?” Peter asked, as Rocket repressurized the airlock. His forcefield dissipated when it sensed he was in an oxygenated environment, static leapfrogging over each blade of fur. Rocket nodded. Peter mirrored him, face grim as any man who'd been on both sides of this space battle too many times to count. “Alright. Positions.”

“You get Yondu his gun?”

“Yeah, I told Kraglin and Kraglin told Drax and – Wait. Did you say gun?”

Rocket frowned. “Course I did.” Then, with suspicion - “What did you think I said?”

“Lunch! I thought you said get him his lunch! Shit.”

“ _Lunch?_ Why the fuck would you -”

“I _know!_ I was gonna go chew him out later for putting his stomach before, y'know, all of our lives, but -”

“I can't _believe_ you -”

“Hey, I was distracted, and you were mumbling -”

“ _I do not mumble!_ ”

“I am Groot?”

That shut them up. Rocket hurried past Peter. The leafy head poked from one of the vents that Groot spent most of his days exploring. Rocket ducked, knowing the importance of addressing people on their own level – or as close as you could get to it without lying flat your stomach.

“Hey, lil' guy,” he said, providing a paw for Groot to hop onto. “Let's take you to your hidey hole. Like we talked about, yeah?” He took the rifle Peter handed him and snapped it to his gunbelt without looking, charging the magnetic clip to keep it in place and comming the cockpit to tell Kraglin to divert power to the ring around their airlock. “It's all gonna be okay,” he told Groot, and managed a smile to prove it.

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah, Blue too. Hey, that's an idea. Can I leave Groot with Yondu, rather than in the hole?”

“The hole's safer,” Gamora pointed out. Rocket shook his head.

“He hates it in there. Too dark, too cramped. Reminds him of -”

He didn't want to say it. The name had become a taboo, of sorts. They all knew what he meant. There hadn't been much choice at the time, but Groot's tearful tale of the walls closing in on him, of almost being crushed, alone and afraid in a place no toddler should ever have been forced to go, stabbed guilty pins into all of their hearts.

“I think he'd like the company, is all,” finished Rocket lamely. “Ain't that right, little guy?”

“I am Groot!”

“Yeah, that's it. Grandpa Blue.” They padded away, Rocket reminding his crew to gather on the Bridge, far outside the blast radius. Once they were on a depopulated corridor however, he turned to his pocket-sized companion, tail frisking with an anticipation he refused to wear on his face. “Hey. If Blue's grandpa, what am I?”

Groot considered, tiny finger tapping his chin. “I am Groot,” he decided, after a minute. Rocket shook his head.

“Nah, I'm too old to be your brother.”

“I am Groot?”

“Quill's dad. Ain't gonna tread on his toes.”

Shrug. “I am Groot.”

“Yeah, kid. Uncle will do.”

Yondu seemed surprised to have the bundle of joy deposited on his lap, but didn't complain. Rocket tried to hide his smile when he spotted the plate of untouched saltines on his bedside table. Crackers were all they had left: bland and tasteless and dehydrating. When they were combined with anti-scurvy pills, they contained enough nutrients to keep them on the perky side of functional. “Sorry,” Rocket said, gesturing to them. “I tried, but... It's like that game Quill likes. Y'know. Chai-knees...”

“Chinese whispers. S'okay. These things are dense enough I can chuck 'em at anyone who comes in.”

Rocket allowed himself to rest a hand on Yondu's leg. Comfort, that was all, His thigh just so happened to be the nearest limb – and there was a sheet between them, so wasn't like it _meant_ anything. “Not gonna happen,” he said, firm and urgent. “You guys are gonna be fine. And before you say it – that ain't me coddling you. I've got Groot to think of, is all.”

“And ya left him with me,” Yondu drawled. “Convenient. Rat – I almost think ya care.”

His grin had a teasing edge, a danger Rocket couldn't let himself acknowledge for fear it'd eat him whole. He swallowed and looked away, claws grazing Yondu's leg through the sheet.

The guy was in his boxers and a high-necked shirt. After shedding the first few layers of skin, he was too sensitive to handle heavy leather. Rocket wasn't complaining. Even when he studied his own tucked up knees, he could see blue from his peripherals. Yondu was hairless, over what wasn't obscured by grubby fabric. Would he feel velvety-smooth? Perhaps scaly, like Rocket's hands, covered in miniature scutes that constantly caught and tugged at his fur? Only one way to find out...

Rocket forced himself to focus on the weight of the gun on his back. He was grateful to the judder that rattled him toe to ear tip, and the rest of the ship alongside.

They’d docked.

“Course I care,” he muttered. He squeezed Yondu's hand, the one that hadn't tucked around Groot on automatic as two vast space ships clamped in zero-G. “Idiot.”

“Rat...”

“I gotta go.” He flashed another grin, although he suspected Yondu saw right through it. “See you a-holes on the other side.” 

“I am Groot.”

_Stay safe._

“You too.”

Yondu nodded at Groot, who sat harnessed in a cage of blue fingers as the ship settled around them, thrusters blazing to counteract the spin. “What he said.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **THANK YOU to all my commenters! You guys give me strength.**
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> **Also, a word of warning - the Past-noncon warning in the tags relates to Yondu, not Rocket. Rocket's had some gross sex that left him feeling dirty, but it was all consensual. The shit Yondu's been through is gonna be dealt with in upcoming chapters. This is a forewarning - I can put tags on each chapter and summarize for people if they want me to? There's absolutely no graphic noncon/flashbacks. But what happened in the past is.... Very heavily alluded to.**
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	4. Chapter 4

Although the crew of the Quadrant had yet to engage, the battle had long-since begun.

“How’s it going?” puffed Rocket, jogging to a halt beside Peter. His gun harness was state-of-the-art. That was unsurprising; he’d made it himself. He was rightfully proud. The first thing he’d built since leaving the facility, and here it was ten years later, still at optimum functionality. Didn’t half ache though. When he ran it caught every hair, rubbing his clavicle raw from the constant grate of friction burn.

His captain’s blank red eye lenses weren’t the most expressive, but Rocket heard his grin as he spoke. “Like clockwork. Rocket, you stars-damned genius.”

“Clockwork’s outdated by several hundred millennia, Quill. But thanks. S’nice to have someone appreciate my talents.”

It wasn’t even sarcastic. Rocket berated himself for not climbing over Yondu’s medical paraphernalia – most had been removed, with the exception of the portable oxypack – and planting a big wet smack on his mouth. Peter’s compliment, offhand though it was, drained that tightness from his chest. He tried not to preen too obviously, swinging his rifle to rest on his paws. He didn’t need it, not yet, but it was satisfying to set his crosshairs on the skull of the insurgent who’d just crossed the proximity sensor for his nail propulsion grenades. He whispered  _boom_ , miming firing as their helmet was riddled with more spikes than a bilgesnipe’s crest.

Was it rude to greet guests with frag to the face? Only in planet-bound cultures. Out here in the black, if someone didn’t send a courtesy hail before docking, even in an emergency, they were considered a latent hazard and approached in kind. The only question was  _when_ they'd attack you, not  _if_. Rocket learned the hard way to shoot first and ask questions later.

The man staggered. Found his feet. Removed his helmet with a hiss of a depressurization.

No. 

It couldn’t be.

And yet - it was. No mistaking it.

A snarl crawled up Rocket’s throat, shoulders vibrating from the intensity. Peter glanced at him, dismissing his mask so Rocket saw the full glory of his cocked eyebrow. But Rocket couldn’t help himself. Standing there in the middle of their ship, all blue-skinned seven feet of him, was a nerf-herding, slag-humping, frutarkin’ no-good smeghead of a Kree.

A nail perforated his helmet. The Kree plucked it from his forehead, rubbing the black-dripping slice. He shook his head, dispelling any daze, and stomped forwards – only for his foot to crash through the fake panel Kraglin had set up. It landed square on a power coil. They watched him fry in silence.

“That worked,” Kraglin said. If Rocket was any stronger, he’d be squelching his gun grip like putty.

“Kree,” he spat, brain flipping the conundrum over. “Why are Kree so far from Hala’s fleet? And why the hell’re they boarding our ship like pirates?”

“Deserters,” Drax suggested. He sat in front of the main monitors, chortling whenever a soldier got electrocuted, pancaked, or sucked into a localized gravity well. He toned down the mirth when he saw Mantis, petrified on her Bridge chair with hands over her ears, trembling at every boom.

They’d placed the mines at calculated intervals. IEDs and vacuum-borne vessels weren’t intended to mix. Rocket had to guesstimate their blast radius to the best of his ability; last thing they wanted was to breach their hull and scupper themselves. But so far, each device went off as intended. The tunnels choked with smoke, and splattered chunks of Kree dangled from the light casings. They’d turned the fans off in that section of the ship, to prevent the fumes from the incendiaries spreading. Any Kree whose helmets had been compromised were too busy suffering an acute case of carbon monoxide poisoning to shoot the cam-bots, which darted from vent to vent, scuttling spider-like across the vaulted tunnel ceiling.

“Infra reds,” said Gamora, and they switched accordingly. “Show me the main boarding strip.”

It had cleared. Either the bulk of the population was now on board the _Quadrant,_ or – more likely – they were hanging back, awaiting their next move.

Rocket zoomed in until the screen filled with a scratched-out and sand-blasted insignia, seared onto power armor by weld-torch. Soldiers, alright. Looked like they’d kept their gadgetry, but lost their warship. He was glad – they’d have no chance against another _Dark Aster._ Not in this tub.

Gamora studied the feed. It was hazy, even on infra-reds; the bombs blasted out exothermic waves in a lurid rainbow, the dead fading to navy underneath. “We need to send someone in there,” she said.

Rocket activated his forcefield suit before she could ask for volunteers. He was in the mood for killing something. He sneered at the Terran blocking his exit, a wall of muscle and folded leather sleeves.

“You’re not going alone,” Peter said.

“Take me! Take me!”

“Drax, no. This requires stealth, buddy – not exactly your strongpoint.” Peter glanced at Mantis, who made herself as small as possible. Her antennae drooped, trying to wrap her up like a wholly ineffectual shock blanket. “Anyway, I want you here. You guard the Bridge, understand? In case any of them got past the traps.”

“They know we have low numbers,” Gamora continued, musing from screen to screen. “If we were operating at full capacity, we wouldn’t risk this level of shrapnel damage. Survivors will expect little resistance.”

Rocket grinned. He strutted forwards and yanked on Kraglin’s pant leg. “They’ll be wrong. With me, skinny.”

Peter nodded, relieved he wasn’t wading into a firefight solo. Kraglin looked less pleased. “We’re just gonna walk in there? An unknown ship?”

“It’s a scout mission. I’ll be walking in there; you provide cover fire.” Rocket scrunched his snout, putting on his best goo-goo voice. “Don’t tell me the big bad Ravager’s scared of a few –“

He didn’t get to finish. Kraglin, whey-faced but grim, rammed the pistols he’d been subjecting to a meticulous polish into their holsters, and led the way to the door.

 

* * *

 

They skulked through the corridors, a short-statured wraith and his elongated shadow. Rocket couldn’t claim to have the same _connection_ to Kraglin as with Yondu, but the guy could be stealthy when he needed to be, and he wasn’t one for extraneous chin-wagging. Rocket appreciated that. But it would take more than their combined sneaking skills to creep past a Kree patrol.

“Give ‘em a distraction,” Rocket mumbled into his wristpiece. He poked his toes into the gap in a felled Kree’s armor to check if he was actually dead. When there was no reaction, he nodded to himself and moved to the next, using the clutter of dropped military-grade plasma rifles for cover. If one of these bastards was still breathing, if they had an active commlink, all their pussyfooting would be for nothing.

The opening chords of _Wild Horses_ were lost beneath Peter’s groan. The latter only filtered through Rocket’s mic, rather than blaring out from every speaker on board. “This one again? I swear it’s all you listen to.”

“Shaddup. It’s working.” Four paces ahead, one of the cadavers flinched. Rocket pointed at it, nodding to Kraglin. The helmet faced away, so most likely the occupant had yet to spot them. With Kraglin’s higher vantage, it was an easy task to put a bolt through his cranium from behind.

“Nice shot,” Rocket breathed, and gestured Kraglin forwards.

The enemy ship was a commandeer job. Once upon a time it had been a freighter, ferrying supplies and refugees between warring territories. Rocket ran a quick survey of the schematics, hacking into the airlock panel while Kraglin scouted the hallway and double-tapped any soldier suspected of faking. Once the specs finished downloading onto his wrist-mounted dataport, he checked the chronometer and grinned to himself.

This was going to be over quickly. Slick and easy, just the way he liked it, like a greased rat into a burrow or a necroblast down the barrel of a gun.

That hit the wall an inch from Kraglin’s ear. The splatter sizzled off his forcefield – thank fuck Rocket convinced him to wear the spacesuit. But nothing could provide 100% protection against plasma. Two droplets weren’t repelled by the mesh of interlocking holomatter. Kraglin hissed as they sizzled through his jacket and into the skin beneath. “Fuck…”

“I got this.” Necroblaster material kept on burning, cleaving flesh and bone and organ tissue and beyond. A single fleck could be deadly – but it was easy to neutralize, so long as you caught it before it reached any arteries. Kraglin nodded, crouching to retrieve a vial from a pouch on his belt. Since the dawn of the Xandarian-Kree wars, any smart spacefarer carried diluting agents.

Kraglin’s brand was called _Anti-plas._ His hand trembled as the droplets squirmed through the weedy muscle of his arm. But he didn’t ask Rocket to fish the phial out for him, and Rocket didn’t offer. He was a big boy; he could handle it.

He was more engrossed with exterminating the bastard who’d shot him. Only, when he grabbed a helmet from a nearby body and poked it around the airlock, it wasn’t obliterated in a blizzard of green-black goop. The shot skidded wide. Someone wasn’t a marksman. Rocket counted the second it took for his clip to reload.

One guy. One relatively inexperienced guy, at that. Only the Kree wouldn’t employ an infantryman who couldn’t shoot straight – which meant he had other specialties. Most likely? The pilot.

“Hey,” Rocket yelled, waggling the helmet in a mocking jig. He had to shout to be heard over the music. “You wanna surrender?”

Besides him, Kraglin finally uncorked the ampoule. The funnel only let a small drizzle escape– didn’t want to go wasting this stuff. He dismissed his forcefield for long enough to massage it in. Luckily they were only wearing them in case of hull breach; the insides of the ship were still pressurized enough to keep their blood liquid, and their lungs in their chests where they belonged. The smoke was thick, but Kraglin was Hraxian. He’d breathe bitumen if you let him.

“One?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth. So he was smart enough to piece that together. It made sense; there had to be a reason Yondu kept him around.

Well. Rocket could think of other reasons. He didn’t know what was attractive about rheumy blue eyes and an underwhelming chin, but then again, the allure of most fleshies was incomprehensible.

Most fleshies except Yondu. Yeah, yeah; he had no room to judge.

“One,” he confirmed. Kraglin’s features pinched from residual twangs, as he explored the smoking holes in his arm. They were tiny, barely larger than Rocket’s claw tips, but they must smart something rotten – like a bee-sting crawled under the flesh. It was hard to hear each other; while the chain reaction of plosive bomb-blasts had faded,  _Wild Horses_ rolled around on repeat.

“That can’t be right. Why leave their ship undefended?”

“I dunno." Rocket lugged his rifle to a ready lock. "But as our guy ain’t in a talkative mood, I suggest we go find out.”

 

* * *

 

The Kree turned out to be surprisingly verbose when he had necro-gunk eating his face, blackening the surrounding skin in a fast-acting putrefaction. Kraglin tipped the neutralizer vial with a questioning look, but Rocket shook his head.

“No, he ain’t told us everything.” He flicked his mic to broadcast so the whole of the Bridge crew could hear it – then, as an afterthought, toggled in the medbay too. Yondu might like to know what was going on. “So your second breach team took an escape pod for a spin and docked on the ship’s far side, yeah?”

“Y-yeah,” the pilot stuttered, eyelid ticking. From how much mucus he’d leaked, the plasma had reached his sinuses. “Please –“

“Calm down, you got a minute before it hits your brain. Where were they headed?”

“If I tell you they’ll kill me, please –“

“If you don’t tell us,” Kraglin growled, “you die here.”

He shook the vial, mocking. The tincture twinkled, a sapphire that matched Yondu’s favorite dashboard doohick.

Rocket gave him an approving grin. Kraglin sure knew how to act the cold bastard – or maybe he was one, under that goofy exterior. Rocket didn’t know him well enough to say.

He’d wager Yondu did, though. That ached, but not nearly so much as it might’ve, if he’d indulged in the fantasy of Yondu beneath him: all that pretty blue skin spread out, blue-blue-blue; Yondu’s pink eyes drooping half-lidded as Rocket spread his long legs and parted blue buttocks and pushed his tongue inside…

Not now. The point was, he wasn’t stupid enough to believe Yondu wanted him. Ergo, the lance twisting in his chest hurt, but it wasn’t barbed. Yondu had a Kraglin. He didn’t need a Rocket too – that was just a fact of life. Nothing to be done but accept it.

“So,” said Rocket conversationally, leaning on the Kree pilot’s vacated chair. They had him on the floor, belly-up like a flipped bug, his arms and legs clamped with gravimetric cuffs. For every milimeter the necromatter gained, he fitted in his bonds, twisting erratic as if he was sat on a taser. “You and Yondu. How long’ve you been… Y’know. Together?”

“I-is now the time –“ sputtered the Kree. He was ignored.

Kraglin chewed his cheek, nonchalant. “Aw, y’know. Since ‘bout thirty years back. Course, I knew _of_ him before, but I didn’t… _Know-_ know him, y’know?”

Longer than Rocket had been alive. Go figure. “So you’re pretty stable then? No action on the side?”

“Yeah. Been cap’n and first since then, and while I got offers from a few crews after Stakar kicked us out, I got a decent place here. I respect the cap too much to leave.”

Rocket frowned. “That all sounds very… professional.”

“Can we please concentrate on the necromatter closing on my brain…”

“We can concentrate on that after you’ve talked, sparky!”

“Well, I mean, we drink and stuff together too,” said Kraglin, picking up where they’d left off. He shrugged; a self-conscious motion that reminded Rocket how gawky he looked in comparison with other fleshies. But in the throes of combat back there, he’d been different. Sleeker, deadlier. Maybe even _sexy._ And if Yondu and Kraglin fought side-by-side...

“You don’t spend three decades with a guy without gettin’ to know him,” Kraglin concluded. “We’re pretty tight.”

“I think I’m ready to talk now…”

“Shut up a moment. Tight… how exactly? Like, how would you describe that?”

Kraglin’s eyes narrowed. Both ships had switched to emergency lighting, and the red exit beacon over the airlock made his pallor sicklier than ever. “Why do you care?”

“And,” said Peter hurriedly, through the fizzle of static in Rocket’s ear, “you do realize the comm’s still on? Can you guys save this for _after_ you’ve gotten information out of our guy?”

“Please,” gasped the Kree, squirming like a Beastie worm impaled on a fork. “It’s in my eyesocket, please…”

Kraglin retrieved his phial. He shook a generous dollop onto the steaming hole. The Kree sagged in a sweaty spread-eagle, cheek muscles loose around the bore hole and eyes wide enough to show the whites. “They’re headed for the medbay, damn you. The one on our ship was destroyed when we boarded it, and we’re still restocking…”

Classic tactic, that. If you were guaranteed to go down, but couldn’t reach the self-destruct button, you blasted the hell out of medbay, life support, engines, and any other key functions aboard. Evidently, the original owners of the craft hadn’t performed a thorough scuppering. Mortality rates were high for spacefarers; there was little wonder that the Kree were hoarding whatever med tech they could hustle.

Rocket didn’t care about their shopping list. He was halfway through the hatch that joined the two ships in a liplock of rubber and galvanized steel. _Wild Horses_ blared merrily away, echoing through the tunnels like it had been tapped out on tubular bells, but Rocket didn't care about that either. While he’d broadcast that embarrassing interchange between Kraglin and himself for all of the crew’s enjoyment, Peter was the only one who’d mocked him for it.

From the medbay? Nothing but silence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning: mild allusions to attempted noncon in next chapter! Nothing explicit. Comments = <3**


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CN: mentions of attempted rape/non-con. Do not read if this is likely to be triggering. There's nothing graphic and the guy gets his just comeuppance, but it's definitely A Thing That Almost Happened.**

Torture, as every spacefarer knew, rarely worked. It was always a question of credence. Why should the pilot tell the truth? For all Rocket knew, he could have gabbled any old destination, and gotten the antidote out of them while ensuring his crew wouldn’t have him keel hauled. Two Orloni, one plasma bolt. The odds suggested a lie – but there was too much at stake for Rocket to gamble on it.

“Dammit,” he growled. He picked up the pace, darting past grilled walls and vent ducts in a brindled flurry. Kraglin had to jog to keep up. But at the end of the cycle, four legs were fleeter than two, even when those two resembled mobile lampposts. Rocket soon pulled ahead.

His mic had been on; they’d all heard the exchange between him, Kraglin, and their captive pilot. Rocket only hoped Peter had the sense to leave Drax on guard duty. These soldiers were military grade; if they were capable of coordinating a two-pronged attack, they could manage three lines of offence. A third squad could be converging on the control room this very minute, toting necroblasters, creeping on soft-soled boots, modified for stealth. If the Kree took the Bridge, they lost everything.

However, if Rocket didn’t reach the medbay soon, he’d lose Yondu and Groot. His whiskers twitched, snarl chittering through him teeth to tail. _Unacceptable_.

“Slow down,” puffed Kraglin. For a skinny guy, he didn’t have good cardio. “ _Think._ We can’t bust in there and start a shoot-out. Cap’n could be caught in the crossfire.”

Rocket would punch him, if he wasn’t making good headway. He decided to save it for when Groot was slumbering in his nursery and Yondu could mock Rocket for dropping everything and sprinting to his rescue. 

They hadn’t given him a gun. _They hadn’t given him a fucking gun._ Having promised Yondu he wouldn't need one, the lining of Rocket’s stomach had long-since turned to lead. The poison sunk into his entrails, making him colicky with guilt.

Over the tannoy, _Wild Horses_ blared on repeat. Peter must’ve forgotten to flick his zune onto shuffle. The heavy beat sounded worryingly funereal, but Rocket couldn’t think like that.

“You just gotta survive, Blue,” he muttered, Kraglin cussing in his wake. “That’s all. Ain’t that hard now, right? Just survive. I’ll handle the rest.”

 

* * *

 

Yondu was alive alright. For how long? Who knew.

Rocket viewed the world from a lower angle than most. Even he could tell how small Blue looked, how faded, how far from the grinning maniac who’d blown his own engines just to prove that Yondu Udonta was not a man to be fucked with. It took a single Kree to pin him, forearm a yoke across his throat.

Another occupied Yondu’s bed, collapsed on his front. He’d been crawling over Yondu when a scalpel separated his jugular from his neck. The hole leaked brackish black blood, plastering him to the sheets. Those were thoroughly coated, shiny as taffeta, a seeping ebony stain that Rocket couldn’t unsee no matter how often he blinked.

As for Groot? Groot was nowhere to be seen.

The chords started for the third time. _Childhood living is easy to do,_ purred the Rolling Stones – dumb name for a band, but then again, this was coming from a guy called _Rocket._

The second boarding party was slimmer than the first. They comprised no more than eight men, possibly nine if they'd stowed someone around the corner. They'd frittered most of their numbers into the main rush – that or a cohort was charging the Bridge as Rocket lurked behind the medbay door, far below the soldiers' sight-line.

Rocket only had space in his head for so much worry. Peter, Drax, Mantis and Gamora would have to handle themselves.

_You know I can’t let you slide through my hands…_

He pressed his hackles to the doorframe. Fur flattened on chilly steel. If he tuned out the familiar words, each of which blurred though his mind, evocative as incense whiffs, he could eavesdrop on the conversation. He didn’t much like it.

“You’re telling me this one took out the captain? He can barely stand!”

_Wild horses couldn’t drag me away…_

“Can someone turn that stars-forsaken music off? Look, he was the only one in here when captain entered. He ordered the room clear, then we find this? What do you think; the scalpel jumped into his neck?”

_Wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away…_

Yondu dangled by the armpits; his toes just scuffed the ground. He chuckled nastily around the gag. That had been improvised from a pillowcase, although Rocket couldn't see the point. Were Yondu's arrow online, he wouldn’t be acting the damsel; that much was for sure.

Yondu's captor advanced a step, hauling his cargo along. Rocket caught a clear view of the bite mark, tooth marks puncturing a rubbery glove. Even from this distance, the imprints corresponded with the chips in Yondu’s teeth. “He’s dangerous, with or without his toy,” the Kree insisted. “I had hoped that we would uncover something of value on this ship, but I never thought it would be a prize of this magnitude. Do you know what Udonta’s bounty is on Hala?”

A disbelieving snort. “Ten thousand units isn’t worth the trip to Hala. Or have you forgotten we’re wanted men too?”

Yondu made a casual sweep of the room. Very casual. Rocket, spying through the chink in the door, hoped he was checking on Groot’s bolthole. Yondu was a smart guy – cunning bastard, more like. As soon as he heard commotion, he’d have packed Groot somewhere private and snagged himself a knife from the collection Rocket had scattered during his light-fixing expedition, to hide in the folds of his sheet.

As for why the Kree had mounted the bed, and Yondu on it? Why he’d ordered the room cleared first? Rocket could only guess – but he tried to see it from the a-hole’s perspective. You march into the medbay of the ship you’re occupying, to find an old enemy of your people sprawled out helpless on a bunk, like a sacrifice on a primitive altar. He puts on his tough-guy act: runs his mouth, piles on the bravado, smiles that infuriating smirk. He insults your carrier, your sire, your race, even the army you deserted. Brazenly looks you in the eye and dares you to put him in his place.

So you do, in the traditional way of conquerors from Xandar to Betelgeuse.

Fury filled Rocket like a crucible. The hot licks indurated slowly, dense as shavings from a neutron star. Yondu killed the captain far too fast.

“Ten thousand units officially. He’s worth _hundreds of thousands_ to the Noble bloodlines!” So argued Yondu’s captor, holding him like a man-size doll. “Think of what we could do with that!”

“Think of what they would do to _us!_ You’ve seen the gibbets! Deserters are demolecularized if they’re lucky, Gunnery Sergeant. _If they’re lucky._ ” The necroblaster rested against Yondu’s sternum; it rose and fell with the shaky pull of his breath. He needed his oxygen mask. The Kree didn’t care; if he died of acute vacuum-induced pneumonia, they could eschew their argument altogether. “He killed the captain. I say we return the favor.”

“Shit-shit-shit…” That was Kraglin; he’d just caught up, panting almost hard enough to give them away. “We gotta stall, distract ‘em until the cavalry arrive…”

Rocket pumped the reloader on his gun. The click made the nearest Kree stiffen in his slim-fit war-boots.

“I am a cavalry,” he said, to those rich Jagger vocals of _I have my freedom but I don’t have much time_. “Lights dim!”

And with that he darted between the soldiers' legs, firing straight up on repeat.

The percussion rifle packed quite the punch. The Kree were blasted into the ceiling, one after the other, launched by the crotch. The light panels, darkening on Rocket's command, shattered in a glittering plastic cascade.

Suffice to say, most passed out. Of those whose codpieces glanced the shot away, they were still due at least five minutes in the foetal position before they became a threat.

Rocket rolled under the penultimate man, the one who'd suggested they cut their losses and Yondu's throat. He discarded his empty clip and locked the gun onto his back, before scampering up his pant leg, using the buckles and zippers on his boots as a grip.

He ran up his body vertically, bounding like a greyhound around a track. Each burst of his hindlegs propelled him counter to gravity. It dragged on him, invisible weights lashed to his ankles. But Rocket refused to give in.

The last thing that Kree saw was the furious triangle of a face, whiskers bristling, the coruscant flicker of Rocket’s space-field glinting from his off-white snarl. Then the clasp of the gun belt unclicked. The rifle butt sailed towards his nose like sped up footage from a Nova war documentary.

First blow cracked his visor. Second snapped it. The other Kree – the Gunnery Sergeant – shoved Yondu to one side, hard enough to bounce him off the wall. He took a single step before Kraglin splattered his brains in a navy fresco over the deconstructed mediscanning pod.

Dammit. Rocket prayed no one was dumb enough to get themselves shot in the folderol. It would take _weeks_ to hoover the slops out of the wiring.

Yondu wiped mulch off his cheek, wheezing as he slid to a splash-free zone. He scraped the last slithery clags from his beard, and proceeded to unfasten his gag with the unhurried languor of one who'd survived too many firefights to bother with adrenaline.

“I hate the ones that pop,” he said.

Rocket snorted. The Kree’s upflung hand quivered, a splay-fingered barricade between the rifle butt and his nasal bridge. “What d'you want me to do with this one?” he asked. Yondu's shrug was the lazy coil of a snake.

“Whatever the fuck ya want.”

“ _Excellent_ choice.” Rather than bringing the rifle down, he smacked it sideways like a bat in that 'cricket' game Peter insisted they play once a lunar-cycle in the _Quadrant_ mess hall. Using the Kree's pauldrons as a springboard, he booted him further in the same direction, setting him reeling, spiralling, fatally off balance. “Kraglin-?”

The loud report of the blaster. The puppet-like jolt as the Kree found his head travelling in multiple directions at once. Clearly, Kraglin was in the mood to play ball.

Rocket landed clumsily, ears ringing from the flip. He'd tossed the rifle so he wouldn't clock himself in the face and ruin his entrance. Tracking its parabola, he calculated that it would’ve skittered to rest by Yondu before he saw it lying there, an inch from blue toenails that looked as much of a tetanus risk as the bolts that ornamented the _Quadrant’s_ rusty upholstery.

Oddly, Yondu didn’t punt the rifle back towards him. Rocket paused, halfway through stooping to retrieve it. He looked up instead.

“Fuck,” he said, touching his calf. “Blue, you look like shit.”

It was no understatement. Neither had the Kree been exaggerating when he claimed Yondu couldn't stand alone – his knees crooked inwards, and he had to brace himself on the wall or crumple. He was breathing strangely, ragged and uneven, and it looked like the intakes hurt.

“You injured?” Kraglin asked, brusque and business-like. He bustled forwards, ignoring Yondu’s headshakes. Rocket let his lips fold over his teeth in time to stop himself ripping a chunk from the first mate’s leg.

Flarknads, what was wrong with him? This had to stop. Yondu might not be able to fend off a whole Kree battalion on his lonesome – wouldn’t be able to until Rocket fixed the jump drive and earned himself a spare hour to dedicate to arrow repairs. But he was more than capable of looking out for himself. The body on his mattress proved that.

However, Rocket wasn't registering Kraglin as a threat to Yondu’s wellbeing. Just to Rocket's pride, and his place in Yondu's life. Had Rocket been several feet taller, he’d take Kraglin’s place: tipping Yondu’s head back, waving digits in front of his eyes for the counting, resting a hand on his chest to feel his ribcage swell around each rattling lungful.

Yondu’s eyes rolled back. He'd have slumped if Kraglin hadn’t caught him.

“Shit, sir. I think you better sit down.”

He had the decency to scoot the corpse off the bed before swinging Yondu around on his own collapsing momentum and letting him drop. He hit the soaked mattress hard – too hard, most likely – but Kraglin was already stretching out his arms, wincing from the strain of heavy haulage. Weedy git. Rocket stalked to the dead captain, just to give himself something to focus on besides worry. He jabbed it with his empty rifle.

“What happened here?” His voice broke, just a little. “And why was he in your bed?”

Yondu’s shrug was far too casual. “Had to lure him close if I wanted to stick him." He gestured to the plate of saltines, dislodged from the table. The stale crackers had been stomped to crumbs by soldier-boots. Hopefully, if the Kree expressed interest in burgling their medbay rather than their galley cupboards, that meant they kept a well-stocked pantry. "Y’all didn’t give me much to work with.”

Kraglin huffed like this was a regular occurrence. He finished off the remaining soldiers with quick, precise shots from his pistol, then turned his attentions to his captain. Yondu was in his usual combo: boxers and a light shirt. The latter Kraglin rolled up, revealing that dark lip of skin Rocket had noticed before. He started pressing across his thorax, watching Yondu for signs of pain. Rocket meanwhile flopped cross-legged, not wanting to mountaineer to the bed's alpine peak. Or at least, not while Kraglin was watching.

“So you – what. Seduced him?”

Yondu’s guffaw made his chest spasm. No nipples, Rocket noticed - but his smooth pectorals jumped against Kraglin's palm, ribs contracting in sharp bursts. “Naw. Kree don’t like me much – ‘cept as somethin’ to hurt. All I had to do was lay there all pretty-like and insult him until he decided to show me how to keep my mouth shut.”

“At which point you shut his. Permanently.” Rocket couldn’t say he was happy about Yondu’s methods; couldn’t say he was happy about the thought of any hands on him but his own. He wished it was just care for Yondu’s wellbeing – and admittedly, the vast majority stemmed from that. But Rocket was an avaricious little beast. What he wanted, he didn’t like to share. If he got close to Yondu, would he smell the Kree on him? Their armor stunk - the rubber lining had been treated with something to make it paradoxically breathable and airtight, worn like a second skin. Scorched metal warred with blood for dominance over Rocket's sensory processing unit, scents mingling in a claustrophobic minestrone. He pulled it through his twitching nose regardless, seeking out the hint of sour BO and Ravager underneath. 

“Only wish I coulda done it for ya sir,” Kraglin drawled. When Yondu responded with a good natured noogie and a reminder he could fight his own battles, Rocket looked the other way. The situation would never have infringed on nasty territory if he'd only given Yondu that gun. That burned like a mouthful of vomit: acidic and boozy-thin.

“I ain't never gonna let that happen again,” Rocket told the fur poking from the collar of his jumpsuit. Kraglin dug a finger into his ear, and Yondu exaggeratedly cocked his head.

“Whassat, Rat?”

“Nothing.” They'd only laugh. They were too blasé about this, the both of them. They wouldn't _understand._ Wouldn't get why Rocket's claws were curling and his teeth were _itching,_  scent smearing from the glands under his tail. The yearn to stake his claim bubbled at the back of his throat like magma had welled up from his guts and he was about to start spitting lava.

Yondu frowned. “Rat,” he said, scooting towards the edge of the bed like he planned to stand. The bloody sheets slid against him, tacking wetly to his thighs. Kraglin's grip kept him seated- it was a disturbing testimony to his weakness that Yondu couldn't break it. “Look. Nothin' happened - “

“Drop your weapons!”

And there was Quill, fashionably late, just as _Wild Horses_ made its fifth turnaround.

_Childhood living is easy to do…_

Quill lowered his gun, after casing each double-tapped Kree. “Oh. You've killed them all. Congrats. I feel kinda redundant now.” But then he did a quick headcount. The realization slammed into Rocket with the velocity of a meteorite. Dammit, he’d been so caught up with Yondu, the enemy, the Kree on the bed. He hadn’t even thought about…

“Uh, guys? Where's Groot?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **sfdghksjddf laptop keeps fucking up but managed to get this one posted. Anyway, if it seems like they're glossing over the whole thing with the Kree captain... Yeah. That's gonna come back to haunt them. Peace. Love. Comments? x**


	6. Chapter 6

“I left him in there.” Yondu chest, as it turned out, made 'closing up with worry' quite literal. They retrieved his oxygen mask, and he spoke between long gulps, his voice rasping at the bottom of his larynx. He pointed to the vent by the bed. Rocket, closest to it in terms of height, dropped to one knee and peered into the darkness. Even with his nocturnal vision, he couldn't see his woody friend.

The guilt gnawed harder than ever. What was wrong with him? How could he get so caught up in this thing, this stupid, fantastical, non-reciprocated  _thing_ , that he forgot about Groot? His buddy, his companion, his oldest friend – or all that remained of him. The little guy needed him. He relied on him. And sure, Yondu needed help, but Groot should always be Rocket's number one priority. He wouldn’t forget that again. What sort of Uncle lost their own kid?

“Groot?” he called, soft and low. “Groot, you down there? It's safe now, you can come out.”

Amidst the clunk of far-away fans and the plip-plip-plip of blood, Rocket heard something that might be a hiccup. He sighed. “I can't fit in there. But I ain't gonna leave you, gottit?” He pried the grate free and wedged his arm in to the hairy pit, wiggling clawed fingers enticingly. “C'mon. I'm right here, Groot. I'm right here.”

“Yer gonna regret that when an Orloni bites yer hand off,” Yondu stage-whispered. Kraglin shoved him – then hastily helped him rearrange the oxygen mask before his captain coughed up an ailing lung.

Rocket sent him a sneery middle finger. Dick. Yeah, a dick he was a little bit in love with, but a dick nonetheless.

He pretended not to hear the approaching snuffles, the unmistakable tap of tiny bark-crusted feet. When Groot's bottom plopped down on the palm of his hand, he extracted it with tree attached, and blew the dust off them both. “You're okay,” he whispered, clasping him in a one-armed hug, rubbing comforting circles on his back. “You're _okay._ Thank flark.”

“Hey, which one of us nearly died?”

This time Peter punched Yondu. Lightly – there was no choking involved. Yondu managed to keep the mask on, so he could enjoy Rocket's grimace in all its furry glory.

“Yeah, yeah. Keep makin' that face an' it'll stick.”

“Not like I can get any uglier.”

“Hey, you stop that. If you was any cuter I'd put'chu on my dashboard.”

Rocket was very, very glad the Halfworld scientists hadn't given him the capacity to blush. “Bet you say that to all the fuzzballs,” he muttered, untucking and sauntering to the bed. He held up Groot, setting him on the crumpled, blood stained coverlets. Groot didn't notice the sanguine. Poor kid had seen far too much of it, for someone his age. He ran straight to Yondu and hugged the first part of him he came into contact with – which happened to be his knee. Yondu deposited him on his shoulder instead, so Groot could nestle in the neck hole of his shirt and stifle his blubbing between blue collarbones.

Rocket shoved his hands in his jumpsuit pockets. He glared at the floor, just in case his scowl betrayed how much he wanted to take Groot's place. He didn't notice Yondu’s lowered hand until Peter awkwardly hemmed into his fist, and gave him a side-shuffling nudge with his boot.

Rocket, always resentful of a kick, made to growl. Then he saw blue in the corner of his vision, extended like a rope ladder down a crag.

Yondu caught him looking. He cracked his moldy yellow grin. “Thas right. Geddup here. Ain't you Guardians big on cuddle time?”

Peter's ears turned ruby. It was a gradual process; fascinating to watch, like a garnet forming under pressure. “Uh,” he said, pointing both fingers for the exit. “Think I'm gonna go. Change the track.”

“Yeah, you can only listen to this shit so many times,” Yondu agreed. Rocket, hand hovering an inch off Yondu's own, jumped back as if he'd been scalded.

“You don't like _Wild Horses?_ ”

Yondu gave him a stupefied blink. “Not when it's played seven times. At least chuck in a _Whas New Pussycat_ for variety. Issat what you do in the engine rooms, Rat? Just play this on repeat?” He didn't sound scathing, just surprised. Rocket supposed he owed him an answer.

“It helps me concentrate, is all. I. Uh. Get into the rhythm.”

Yondu's bald blue brow ridges crept up. “You _dance?_ ”

“Not _consciously..._ ”

“Definitely going,” Peter repeated, walking backwards now. His beseeching eyes honed on Kraglin. “You too, buddy. C'mon.”

Kraglin was engrossed extracting wax from his ear. He sniffed the orange blob under his hangnail, shrugged, and ate it. “Why? I wanna make sure cap'n's alright -”

“Okay, yep. You're still dumb as ever. Come _on.”_ Peter hooked his arm around the loop of Kraglin's elbow. He dragged the skinny guy off, sputtering protests all the way. “Have fun,” were his last words to Rocket and Yondu. “And remember to keep things G-rated.” He sent Groot a wave and a wink. “You've got company.”

He had the courtesy to shut the door behind him. Rocket avoided looking at the extended hand. If Yondu let it hang at that angle much longer, it'd fall asleep, and Rocket would have no sympathy. He huffed a deprecating laugh.

“Bet Quill thought that was _hee-larious._ ”

“Rat.”

“Insinuatin' all that shit. Real funny. Haha. Ten outta ten for the best comedy on Terra.” The hand moved, as Rocket had known it would. He turned sharply on his heel, staring in the opposite direction and blinking furiously. It was all too much – a whiplash of fear, rage, terror that Groot would be lost in the piping forever, like a child in the Morag catacombs. He only had limited emotional processors, and when they got overloaded, coming down from the rush was like crashing after a snort of raw-cut huffer.

The intensity was bewildering. He'd been so _worried._ So flarkin' worried. And Yondu was fine, and _nothing had happened,_ and Groot was alive, even if the little tree would require total-body immersion to rehydrate, what with how much he was snivelling. Rocket hated that he wanted to join him – just let it all out for a minute, the compressed stress and tension that apparently came hand-in-hand with allowing yourself to care about other people. Why, if the Halfworld doctors had left him incapable of a flush, had they given him tearducts?

“Rat,” said Yondu again. The hand returned. It cupped the back of his head, a tactile web, softer than you'd expect from a workman. But then again, Rocket supposed, you didn't need to weather your palms around gun hilts when you had a whistle-propelled arrow. And considering the shoddy piloting that got him blown out of the Xandarian sky, over the wreck of the Dark Aster where Groot sacrificed himself and Rocket’s life changed forever, Yondu wasn't wholly _au fait_ with a cockpit.

No wonder he didn't have calluses. Fucking princess.

Rocket's own gnarly paws gripped his jumpsuit tight enough that the creases chewed on his groin.

“Yeah?” he whispered. Hoping. Waiting. For what, he didn't know, but... for _something._

A thumb circled his ear. It squashed it, which Rocket usually hated – but for Yondu he stayed still, and let his tail wrap shakily around his legs. His chest quivered around a purr.

“Come up here,” said Yondu. Through the muffler of the mask, it sounded like he was trying to keep his voice just as hushed. “Twig needs us both.”

Of course. Yondu wanted to shirk babysitting duty.

Despite his misgivings, Rocket accepted the lift. Yondu grunted, but he could hoist his weight one armed – _no dick, bad dick, go back home and sleep._ The angle made for a bumpy ride. Rocket ended up piled against Yondu’s side, while his cushion worked the kink from his shoulder. He pushed up, trying not to think about how the warmth percolating his fur came from _Yondu._ The shirt was thin enough for him to see blue through it. From his position, he could run his paws over the curve of Yondu’s gut, maybe reach up to his pectorals, boxy and firm and ripe for the squeezing; then down to his dick and the tight violet pinch of his ass, work out the buttons and levers that made his favorite big blue idiot rev…

Rocket sat on his hands. “You alright?” he asked.

Yondu nodded. “Buddy here ain't doin' so hot.”

It was true. Groot was still crying – but quieter now, slower, like he was easing off to sleep. Rocket stroked his back, following the grain of the wood. “He's had a rough day.”

Yondu laid his head on the pillows, neck scrunched under his chin. “Ain't we all. Guess it were yer clever lil' head what kept us alive.”

It _was_ better when Yondu said it. Not that it didn't make Rocket’s week when Peter acknowledged his superiority, but that was different. More competitive; less emollient and fluffy around the edges. This felt like candyfloss spun inside him. His internal snugness matched the warmth when Yondu gathered him in the crook of his arm.

But that didn't change the fact Yondu was incorrect. Rocket's genius might have saved them – but he had cut it very, very fine. Too fine. Rocket stood accused of forgetting Groot, scrambling Yondu’s request for a gun, and letting things progress with the Kree captain. Rocket was a mechanic. A mender-of-things. But he had no idea what to say, what to do, to make this better again.

Yondu kicked the bloody sheets to the end of his bed. He tolerated the brush of wet fabric on his toes with stoic grit. That at least was something Rocket could fix.

“Here,” he said. He nudged Yondu's bicep, a stout blue gantry that kept him in place. Yondu let him go, face more creased than ever.

“What'chu doin', Rat?”

“Changing your bedsheets. You shouldn't have to kip down in this crap.”

“It doesn't matter -”

“Let me.”

“I don't give a -”

“I do.”

And that was that. Yondu couldn't flop flat – his cushions were too well plumped for that, inflated to keep his torso elevated and his lungs drained of fluid during the night cycle. But he could push air through his nose hard enough to leave white plumes on the inside of his mask, and roll his eyes like he was checking the ceiling for roaches. “Ugh. Knock yerself out.”

Yondu's assent, however grudging, made sherbet fizzle in his tummy. He was letting Rocket do something. He was letting him _help._

He stripped the bed as efficiently as possible, requesting Yondu roll to either side to let him pry loose the sheets (and giving the captain's cadaver as many kicks as he could. Luckily, barring the gouge in the neck, the Kree's armor was airtight – when the captain leaked, he wouldn't start to stink.)

The blood had sunk into the mattress, ink drops on a sponge. Rocket soaked up the worst of it with a big lump of medical gauze, and fetched new linens from the steam closet, regretfully swapping the thermoregulation blanket for a normal one – then, as an afterthought, two. Couldn't have the old coot freezing. He even remembered a spare pillowcase, to replace that which had been made into a gag – but Yondu didn't shift enough for him to put it on. Or, for that matter, the sheet.

Rocket wound up draping the blankets over them. Yondu was bundled to his chin, Groot a bump at the center of his chest. He made the occasional wibble, but they were less constant than they had been, which meant Rocket could concentrate without feeling like someone had driven hooks through his intestines and tugged them apart for inspection.

He hated this. Hated _giving a shit_. It was a curse, one which brought a near-permanent state of contriteness, like he was forever doing something wrong. Things had been so much easier when it was just him and Groot. Back in the good old days, Groot had been large enough to look out for himself – and for Rocket as well. Rocket had taken that for granted. He’d always had a bruiser at his back, and when he heard Groot taking flak-fire he’d _laughed,_ because he knew it only pissed the big guy off.

Now though, Groot was vulnerable. Yondu too. Rocket simply wasn’t big enough – strong enough, _smart enough –_ to guarantee their safety. The realization caught him like a gravimetric snare, tumbling him head over heels.

“There ya go,” he muttered. He touched Yondu's heart. Or rather, the blankets and shirt on top of it. He couldn't feel the beat – not even when Yondu's hand closed sleepily on his, holding it in place.

“Where d'you think you're goin', Rat?”

“Um.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “Back to my room? Or y'know, to the Bridge, to make sure we're clear...”

“Can wait for mornin'.”

“I mean, technically it shouldn't. There's still a danger -”

“Quill can handle it,” Yondu drawled, and Rocket found himself hard-pressed to argue. “For now, this's worn me out as well as the tyke.” He coughed, white foaming the mask like sea froth from a wind-whipped wave. Rocket chewed his lip.

“Your lungs. They ain't getting better, are they.”

Yondu was quiet for a moment. Checking Groot was sleeping, most likely. Once satisfied that the raise and slump of the little guy's shoulders was regular, he directed his answer to the last remaining light that hadn’t been caught in the shoot-out, flickering in sporadic bursts. “Fraid not.”

“You told anyone? Quill? Kraglin?”

“Them's optimists. Don't wanna change that.”

“You ain't threatening me to keep it secret.”

“Cause I know you will.”

Rocket nodded. He'd suspected as much. “You'll be okay,” he promised. “I'll fix the jump drive with parts from the other ship, and then we'll head to Knowhere. There's doctors there...”

Yondu shifted, wriggling further into the warm dent he'd carved in the mattress. “Don't much like doctors, Rat.”

“Same.”

“Go figure.”

They shared a humorless smile. Then a mildly brighter one. “So,” asked Yondu, flipping back the corner of the duvet. “You gonna warm these old bones or otherwise?”

Rocket's pulse lurched like a misfiring starter motor. “No hanky panky in front of Groot.” He said it lightly, jokingly, prepared for Yondu’s laugh. But Yondu just huffed 'wuss', and made that perfect Rocket-sized space between his arm and his side, before letting his head fall sideways and faking a snore.

That sly bastard. He'd left the covers half-dangling. If his lungs were laboring to handle today’s excitement, Rocket didn't want to find out what'd happen if Yondu contracted pneumonia. No choice but to squirm into the place Yondu had indicated, the toasty warmth of his body on all sides, and yank the blanket over to form a humid tent, where Yondu was all he smelled, touched, and knew.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you for every comment, every kudo. They mean more than I can express x**


	7. Chapter 7

For someone who struggled to walk more than five paces without taking a slurp from his oxygen mask, Yondu was one hell of an escape artist. The next day (after Rocket had woken, undergone a minor freak out, grabbed Groot and ran) he was stripping their salvage when he heard that familiar rale of breath.

“You're supposed to be in medbay, old man!” he called, running his buzz saw along the joint that would crack the looted jump drive like a dropped egg. The judder made his bones shake, but it was far from his reverberation frequency, so he didn’t let himself worry about it.

They were hollowing the Kree ship like maggots in a wound. Not long before she was bare to her internal wall-struts. If they were making a thorough job of it, they'd hack into those too; dismantle her in space with weld-torches and the occasional carefully-aimed clatter of a rail gun. But Rocket may have mildly exaggerated the state of their air filters, claiming those of the Kree ship were incompatible. Yondu sounded worse, not better – although that could be because he was shambling the halls like a blue ghost, staggering and slouching and barely setting one foot in front of another. Either way, Rocket would rather deliver him to the Knowhere doctors pronto – after scoping the satellite for surgeries whose lay-out and bedside manner were least likely to recall nasty memories.

“The hell you doin' here?” he asked, spinning to face him. It took too much effort to smother his grin. “Come to pester me while I'm working? That's Groot's job.”

“He's with Peter. Still upset about. Y'know. The incident.”

Rocket put down his weld torch. “That what we're calling it?”

Yondu shrugged. Despite seeking him out, he didn't look in the mood for talking. “Can I sit?” he asked, and Rocket shot him a disbelieving look.

“It's your ship.”

“An' Quill tells me yer mighty iffy about yer space. Ain't often I ask for permissions rather than jus' doin' shit, so I hope you appreciate the fuckin' courtesy.”

Rocket waited. Yondu's flat mouth twisted down at the edges.

“I ain't gonna ask again.”

“Alright then. Park that old blue tush and watch, if this is how you get your kicks.” Rocket had a flair for showing off. He talked his way around various parts and their uses, and even delved into the theory – the niggles of algebra and half-cocked hypothesis that surrounded spaceflight.

There were some scientists, he'd heard, out past Kymellia, who'd cracked the science behind jump portals and light drives. He'd love to meet them one day. Absorb actual, bona fide  _knowledge,_ tried and tested, rather than scrounging the dregs left by ancient civilizations far more advanced than they were.

Spacefarers, as a whole, didn't know how their tech worked. If they were like Peter and Kraglin, they could patch it, and if they were like Rocket, they could rip it apart and piece it together again like parts in a jigsaw, improvise new functions and extract them again, build bridges around misfiring parts and fix whatever broke. But there wasn't one among them who could provide a concrete explanation of how a jump drive got them from A-point to B, without leaving all their vital organs behind.

To a creature like him, designed from the prototype phase to always quest after an answer, it was infuriating.

Yondu didn't share his zeal. Next time Rocket glanced up, busy paws circumnavigating the tombola-shaped gyrofluctor, he found him curled on his side, fast asleep. He scoffed, but his smile kept creeping back. It softened the edges of his scowl, made them perk up, twisting his muzzle into a ridiculous, puppyish expression of joy.

It was  _comfortable,_ being around Yondu. Like with nobody else. And Yondu was evidently comfortable around him.

Plus, snuggled up like this, he didn't snore. Rocket didn't have a blanket to put over him, but it was only a short trek to the medbay, and he resolved to stash spares in his workshop for the future.

 

* * *

 

That was good, because Yondu suffered a serious case of cabin fever. Rocket didn't blame him; he'd been cooped up in that room – spacious though it was, designed to filter the infectious, injured, or just mildly scabious population of an entire Ravager crew – for almost a month. It was enough to drive any starfarer insane. Least of all one who'd been raised in a cage since the day his momma passed him to the Kree slaver in exchange for a bag of units.

Rocket never had father figures in his life – or mother ones, for that matter. He'd been part of a litter, but when he tried to remember those days (before the first implants, before the pain and the injections and the scalpels and the constant grating agony that he called an existence,  _my bones are glass and my skin is tissue, boohoohoo for poor little me)_ everything came out washy, like he was viewing it through a runny windscreen. His carrier, some nameless lab animal who'd gotten fat with pup, was long since dead. He couldn't bring himself to care.

The  _lack_ of roots was more of an issue for him. When Peter gushed about finding his father, it served as a constant reminder that Rocket came from nowhere. That unlike the rest of his friends, Rocket was built for function, not out of love.

It had been relieving in a nasty sort of way, when Peter's dad turned out to be a genocidal maniac. The one thing Rocket held over him. One miserly way in which his life was less shitty than that of Peter Quill, legendary Star-Lord. It was better to have no parents, than those who only pretended to care.

Unfortunately, Peter had another daddy who loved him very much, even if he was too much of a goober to say so.

Rocket laid the blanket over Yondu for the fifth day in a row, where he curled under the shadow of a near-complete jump drive, his prosthetic weighing his head uncomfortably to one side. He'd have a stiff neck come morning. Rocket would offer a massage – playful, playful – and if he was very lucky, Yondu might deign to have his monstrous little paws brush his skin.

No. Yondu didn't think of him like that. Not as a monster – but not as potential bed mate material either. He was just Rocket. A friend. A companion. A kindred soul.  _Family._

Why couldn't Rocket be satisfied with that?

Peter and Mantis were next to intrude on their sanctuary. They jogged through the door, hard enough to make the grills bounce and the mock-up model of a jump core Rocket had constructed out of scrap shiver apart in his hands. And, worse than that, they woke Yondu.

Or, they nearly did. His quiet, snuffly mumble snapped their eyes from Rocket and – thankfully – their mouths shut. Until Peter held up a hand and encouraged Mantis into a high-five.

“Found him!”

Rocket resisted the urge to lob something delicate at them. The satisfaction when it shattered over their idiot heads wouldn't be nearly so bothersome as the effort it took to replace.

“What are you  _doing,_ ” he hissed, as Yondu's eyeballs roved beneath their lids and he grunted a spiel of clicky nonsense. “Let Blue sleep!”

To their credit, they both looked chastened. Hyperactive kids, the lot of them – was it any reason Rocket got so offended when Yondu lumped them in among their number with a casual 'brat' or 'boy'?

“Sorry,” said Peter. Then again,  _sotto voce:_ “ _Sorry!_ Just, I told Kraglin he'd be here. He didn't believe me, and he's tallying food stocks from the new ship so we bet on a crate of nutrient bars, and I just won enough in liqorice flavor to last me to the end of the astral year -”

“It ain't liqorice; it's boiled yaro.”

“Well, it tastes like liqorice to me!”

“And no one else  _likes_ boiled yaro flavor. You'd have had them to yourself anyway.”

“I like licky-rice flavor!” Mantis plastered a hand over her mouth when two head shakes and mimed zipped lips were sent her way. “Apologies. Master Ego never woke so easily. I am too used to being loud.” She sounded so doleful about it. That  _Master Ego_  made an worm constrict in Rocket's innards. He couldn't be mad at her, not even on Blue’s behalf. After ascertaining Yondu remained deep under, he placed his tools on their folds of oil-cloth, ensuring they were cradled fully, no parts brushing the grit and chip-strewn floor.

“S'okay,” he said. “But don't go movin' him back to the medbay. Not yet.”

Mantis shrugged and nodded. She wasn't the one Rocket had to concern himself with. Peter stared at him with enough empathy to make him bristle.

“ _What._ ”

“Nothing. Just.” Peter cleared his throat. He made to say something, but then his eyes skidded to Mantis and he deflated.  _“Nothing._ Forget it.”

Rocket wasn't letting him get away with it that easily. “What?” he insisted, stalking to catch Peter's pant leg. “Don't walk away from me...”

“Don't get so confrontational. You want him to wake up?”

“No, I want you to tell me what's gotten you so damn stupid all of a sudden!”

Peter didn't say anything. Just looked down on him from on high. Rocket detested how that uncompromising stare forced its sympathy onto him like he was baking under the plates in a microwave. He refused to shrink, holding fast until Peter twisted free of the grip.

“It's not a conversation to have in whispers,” was all he said, which was all very well and good if he was trying to be cryptic and infuriating. After checking on Yondu to ensure his blanket hadn't slithered off during the disruption, Rocket pursued into the corridor.

“Dammit Quill,” he snapped, as soon as the hangar bay closed. As the dock was partially vacuum-exposed, atmosphere tethered only by the shields, the airlock seals were exemplary in this part of the ship. Yondu hadn't let their maintenance slide, not even when his galleon ran on fumes.

(Rocket struggled not to fill his mind with pin-up esque images of that beefy blue body in workman's overalls, toiling with his men to suction-fill one doorframe after another with adhesive rubber. Now wasn’t the time, dick. Not the stars-damned time.)

“Talk to me, not at me." His fists bunched tight as the nuts he’d spent the morning heaving away at, locking them fast to their bolts. “Don't treat me like no child!”

Mantis was already sashaying back towards the Bridge. Peter's gaze wandered after her, longingly, as if he wished to follow on and avoid this conversation altogether. Rocket kicked his boot cap to get his attention (then proceeded to hop around for five minutes cradling his toe. Let it never be said that he thought straight when angry).

“Just because I look like a fluffy toy,” he said, wriggling his sore paw and wincing as his nerves re-calibrated, jolt after jolt of pins and needles stabbing his shin, “it don't mean I am one. I'm a man, Peter. Quit acting any different.”

“A man, huh.” Peter scraped a hand through his fringe in that embittered fleshie manner of his. But he sat down, back to the far wall and legs sticking out, so that they could talk face to face. Rocket appreciated that. He showed it by not kicking him again.

“That's right!" His jumpsuit was grubby, and oil matted the fur between his ear and his eye, from where he hadn't clamped a valve tight enough before truncation. Not exactly an image that demanded respect - but this needed to be said regardless. “And a man's got needs, no matter how small an' fluffy.”

“Needs.”

“Quit repeating everything I say! Now.” He didn't take a deep gulp of air. He'd made a living from learning others' tells; that was far too obvious. It left him with a breathlessness like when Yondu's lungs malfunctioned: the light-headed giddiness that preceded hypoxia. “I know you know what's going on.”

“I wish I didn't.”

Rocket tried to pretend that didn't hurt, and failed magnificently. “I don't give two turds about your blessing!”

“So long as those turds don't end up in my pillow.” Peter held up a hand when Rocket made to retaliate. “Dude, I'm too exhausted for wisecracks. I’ve eaten nothing but saltines for weeks and I feel like my innards are shrivelling. I don’t wanna piss you off, I wanna get back to civilization and eat a stars-damned vegetable. But as for you and Yondu...” He sucked on his words like he was trying to get the flavor out. “I'm just trying to work out  _why._ ”

“Why what?” _Why I'd ever be so stupid as to convince myself anyone could be interested in me as more than a fetish? Why I'd want a relationship?_

“Why you're trying to  _bone my dad._ Do you realize how freaky that is for me?”

Okay, so not quite as devastating a smack down as he'd been bracing for. But Rocket disliked it, nevertheless.

“Ain't your choice who I fall for!”

“'Fall for'?”

“ _Stop repeating everything I -_ ”

“Shit. Shit, this is serious.” Peter pulled his knees to his chest, squeezing the skin between his eyebrows. “Fuck.”

Rocket, feeling a little foolish for having escalated to yelling while Quill seemed more concerned with massaging away his headache, padded closer.

“What?”

“It's just...” Quill looked up. Perhaps he saw the trepidation on Rocket's face, or perhaps he had scrolled back through their conversation and located the points where he'd been most defensive. Either way, his expression had changed. “It's not you, okay? It's not because you're...”

“A triangle-faced monkey? A trash panda?”

“I'm  _sorry_ about that, okay. And no. You're a person, like me and everyone else on this crew. I respect that. I swear. It's just...”

Rocket's shoulders slumped. “I'm just  _different._ ” A nice way of negating all the platitudes Quill had just spouted. Quill shook his head again; idjit would give himself whiplash at this rate.

“No, no. You're my  _friend._  Can you understand how it might be a little... strange, for me? To have my friend hook up with my dad? Christ, Rocket. Have you seen him? He's got  _wrinkles!_ ” He sounded so incredulous that Rocket's laugh burst out of him without a by-your-leave.

“And I got grey hair in my whiskers!”

“You're – what. My age? Younger?”

“No.” Suddenly sober, mirth rinsing like suds from a ship during docked-careening, Rocket rocked back on his hindlegs and shook his head. “No I ain't.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don't got that long a lifespan anyway.”

Peter's eyes went round as his spacemask goggles. “I thought that was a joke!”

“Don't I wish.”

“Dude, I'm – I'm sorry. I. Wow. I feel like a real douche for this whole routine now. I'm just. I'm struggling to process a bit. How... How long...? Is that a dickish thing to ask?”

Rocket waved him off. “Five years, give or take.”

“Shit.  _Shit._ ” Peter dropped his head into his hands. “That's  _nothing._ ” Rocket supposed it didn't seem like it, to him. Hell, until a month and a bit ago, Peter had been immortal – even if he hadn't realized it. “It's okay, lil' buddy. It's okay. We're headed to Knowhere, right? There'll be a doctor there, someone who can help...”

“You think I ain't looked?” Since the cycle he saw the date stamped on his spine, conducting self-repairs in a mirror, and asked the overseeing scientist what it meant, Rocket had known his end was preordained. “You don't create an experiment if you can't control every variable. Including death date.”

Peter scoffed. “Well, they obviously didn't control  _every_ variable. You escaped.”

He did. And yet Rocket was still haunted by dreams, whispers in the night cycle, which insisted this was just the next phase of the Halfworld scientists' plan. Let him stage a break out; see how he'd function in the real galaxy. Perhaps all the feeds from his sensory inputs were being recorded in a lab somewhere, and when they'd gathered the data they wanted they would simply... snip their loose end. Pull the plug.

Well, he thought vindictively. If there was some freak in a labcoat spying on his every move, Rocket was going to fuck enough wrinkly blue ass to make him regret his job choice.

“Quill,” he said, quieter. “What the hell do I do?”

“I told you, we go to Knowhere, find some brainiac. Heck, we could make a deal with Tivvan! Gamora's got a few strings she can pull, favors she can cash in on -”

“Not about that. About Yondu.” At Peter's silence, Rocket continued, vitriolic in a half-cocked effort at hiding anguish. “He sees me as a son, okay! I know he has an overreactive dad gene, but I wanna be  _more_  than that. I wanna be more. To  _him._ ”

Peter held up a hand. “You think he sees you as a son?”

“He always calls me 'kid!'”

“That's just Yondu's special brand of demeaning. Rocket, he hasn't come to kip on the floor with anyone else.” He frowned. “Although I don't know why he wouldn't just ask you to come visit. The portable oxygen mask isn't nearly as fine-tuned as the fixed one by his bed.”

Rocket had some idea. It involved that cooped-up feeling, a formication of miniature insects scuttling beneath his fur. Rocket suffered it whenever he went too long without siccing his brain on a complex problem.

It also had something to do with that bed, and that Kree, and whatever almost-happened before Yondu's scalpel was introduced to a carotid.

Shit. He should've wised up to that sooner.  _Of course_ Yondu wouldn't want to be left alone in that room.  _Of course_ he'd be too fucking proud to admit it.

“It's just cause his arrow's broken,” he muttered. “I was the first one in there, when those Kree soldiers had him. It's about feeling safe, or some dumb gushy shit like that.” Some dumb gushy shit Yondu would punch him for daring to voice. Rocket would deserve it too. But Peter smiled, far too goofy for the situation at hand.

“What? You look like one of them stupid curcubitaes you made us carve for Halo-en -”

“Halloween. Pumpkins, they're called, not curca-whatsits. It's a time-honored Terran festival. And Rocket, you really think this is the first time the arrow's snapped?”

Rocket blinked. “Huh?”

“Yeah. Happened… what, six times in my memory. Sometimes it took us a day to find the nearest craftsman who could smelt it back together again, sometimes a week. Each time, Yondu didn't sleep until it was fixed.”

“He didn't sleep for a week?”

“Oh, we tranq-darted him before it got bad,” said Peter breezily. “But yeah. This?” He jerked his chin at the sealed door. “This means something, Rocket.” He stood, leather creaking as it unfolded from the ruckles under his knees. Bending at the waist, he presented the Zune, and Rocket saw that the track had been set to  _Wild Horses._ “Make the most of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Comments and kudos, boys. Comments and kudos. Also = is it just me, or is AO3 no longer posting the most recent fics to the top of the tags?? Don't tell me we've got a dumb algorithm thing here as well...**


	8. Chapter 8

_Make the most of it._

Rocket turned the box over and over, careful not to chip the plastic on his claws.

_Make the most of it._

Hardly stellar advice. He wasn’t operating with experience on his backburners, not like Mister Fucks-anything-with-titties Quill. Although as far as his olfactory senses informed him, Peter and Gamora had yet to share a bed – so maybe all the groundwork in the galaxy didn’t count for much, when you were wooing someone you loved.

Rocket was so absorbed with the Zune that he didn’t notice sleepy eyes watching him until Yondu spoke.

“Mornin’, Rat.” His voice croaked deeper and more gravelled than if he’d been steamrolled in tarmac. Rocket sauntered across, praying the fluff of his tail didn’t betray the butterflies in his tummy. Several thousand hatched simultaneously, fluttering free of their chysalises and making a general nuisance of themselves.

“Hey, Blue. And it’s afternoon.”

Groot, burrowing in the furrow between Yondu’s pectorals, lifted his head long enough for a sleepy yawn, then plopped down again, smacking his lips. Kiddo must’ve crawled through the vents during the night – Rocket wondered how many wall panels Gamora would rip off before she thought to ask after his whereabouts over the comm.

But for now, there was peace. As Yondu seemed content to be Groot’s pillow, Rocket squatted besides him and set the Zune on a rare oil-free patch of floor.

“You wanna pick the song?”

Yondu, it turned out, had a taste for Queen. Not what Rocket would have pegged – but then again, he got a touch obsessive over his music. It woke Blue up a bit at least. He came to cough and look moribund on Rocket’s workbench rather than curling in the corner like a dead space roach. And, while it was no _Wild Horses,_ _We Will Rock You_ did have a good beat.

Rocket gave Yondu’s thigh a cheeky nudge when it got to the _buddy you’re an old man_ verse. He received a cheerful head-thwap in return, and one of those laughs – purring and warm as a rumble from a jet – that stoked the embers in Rocket’s chest and made him think of hope.

Groot growled and tried to bite him when he shoved Yondu again. Rocket didn’t hold it against him – he’d disturbed the kid’s mattress, after all.

He made more of an effort, after that. Parsing the Kree soldiers’ bunks, he found the perfect gift – a shiny doll with a magnetized base that could be affixed to any surface. It followed you around the room with its glazed green eyes. It was weird. It was kinda creepy. It was _perfect._

Barely able to contain his grin long enough to smuggle it past Mantis’s questions, Peter’s sticky fingers, and Kraglin’s narrow glare – which he was really going to have to do something about, one of these cycles – Rocket took it straight to Yondu. Bounding to his current hide-out, he deposited it on his lap. Didn’t even pretend he dropped it there by accident. Just stood besides the blanket nest on the floor of his hangar, scuffing his toes and waiting for acknowledgment or rejection, anything but the becalmed waters between.

Yondu rubbed the bridge of his nose – or the bridge of the oxygen mask, which he wore almost constantly nowadays. ”Mighty thoughtful of ya, Rat.”

He sounded neutral. Too neutral. Rocket slumped.

“Whaddid I do?” He didn’t mean to sound petulant, but it still came out that way. He gave his mental self a kick. _Nice job on convincing him you’re not a kid, doofus._ But speaking of kids, there was one passed out on Yondu’s knee. Rocket pointed at him. “Don’t get ahead of yerself, old man. Toy’s for him, not you.” The lie was as sour as it was obvious.

“Kid…”

“Don’t call me that!”

Yondu exhaled, condensation filling the mask in a shaky cloud. “Rocket. The dolly’s nice. Pride place on my console. But I ain’t been waitin’ here to be showered with yer offerin's like some goddamn alien queen.” He paused. “Although, uh. If ya got anythin’ more valuable stashed in that suit of yers, by all means, keep showerin'.”

Rocket shook his head.

“Right then. Look, I think Twig’s tweakin’. He saw some shit he really shouldn’ta seen, and now I can’t get rid of him.”

Indeed, he’d had a small, twiggy accessory pretty much every time Rocket had seen him. But that didn’t insinuate the kid was traumatized. Rocket hopped up on the bench besides him, sitting on his tail in an effort to stop it twining around Yondu’s arm. “He’ll be fine,” he said, making a picture frame of his fingers and twisting it to pinpoint the almost-completed reactor. “Tough little brat, just like his grandfather.”

Yondu smirked. “You callin’ me a brat?”

“You denying it?”

They shared a chuckle. Rocket buoyed up to Nirvana – for all of five seconds, before he tried to slide a subtle inch closer, just so that their shins would knock, and found himself with a faceful of angry tree.

“Woah, what the fuck? Groot! Buddy, it’s me!”

“Least we know where he gets his pottymouth,” said Yondu. He returned the flipped bird with gusto. “Well? You believe me now?”

“I believe he found a rabid Orloni in the tunnels!” Rocket pried the toddler off him, wincing as he took two handfuls of fur. Great. Stress-induced shedding wasn’t a thing his species indulged in, but Groot was determined to make his hairline recede in any way he could. “Sheesh! Kid, what’s wrong with you?”

“I am Groot!” screamed Groot, waving his fuzzy mittens in a way that was probably supposed to be intimidating. “I am Groot!”

“How’m I supposed to get off him? I was hardly touching him! Hell, Groot.” Rocket pushed to sit, rubbing the new bald patches on his jowl. “You need a time out. I’m callin' Gamora.”

Groot’s eyes instantly swelled to half the size of his head. He even threw in a lip wibble. Rocket remained stalwart – or rather, the sting in his newly-trimmed muttonchops cut through any sympathy. “Nuh-uh. You deserve everything you get for that one, bud.” His finger hovered over the dial button on his commspiece. “Think I should call Peter too?”

“There is,” said Yondu philosophically, “such a thing as overkill. Twig here’s learned his lesson.”

“You’re way too soft on him!”

“Was a time I’d stick you with my arrow for that. But…” Yondu creaked out a shrug, the mist and recede of breath on his oxygen mask disrupted by his snort. “No arrow. And no captaincy either, so I ain’t got no rep to defend. Rat, I’m his grandpa.” He sounded proud about it, too. “S’my damn _job_ to spoil him.”

“I am Groot!”

“See? He agrees. And so long as he promises not to do that again –“

“I am Groot?”

“Kid, if they’re more than I can handle I’d rather you be runnin’.”

“I am Groot.” Adamance. Shaken head, crossed arms, pout; the whole damn hog. But Rocket, watching the interaction with twitching whiskers, couldn’t help his conviction that Yondu didn’t need the body language to understand. Maybe it was the way he propped the kid on his knee, forming a backrest out of one curled finger. Maybe it was the way he responded to Groot without using Rocket as an intermediary.

His grin strained at the edges of his muzzle. He ducked away – but was stopped by the hand that cupped his fluffy chops. It stalled his brain, making it spit fractured repeats of the same image and associated sound clip: Yondu smirking at him, saying “Don’t’chu hide that smile, I don’t get to see it nearly enough.”

Rocket managed an eloquent “Urgh.”

“I am Groot,” muttered Groot sulkily, snapping Rocket’s thoughts from their reverent recitation of all-things-Yondu, from smooth blue skin to scars and prosthetic and dirt and sweat, and nails under which the entire grub-content of the hangar floor seemed to gather. They were facing each other, Yondu’s tucked leg between them, close enough that if he had body hair it would’ve been stirred by the rising pant of Rocket’s breath. The wet tip of his cock extended, a sensitive sprout, nosing from the sheathe. The bone set up a steady chirr, a tone too low to be heard.

He’d been told, by various tail-chasers over the years, that the vibrating motor made for some damn fine prostate massages. He’d love to test that out, if only Yondu would let him...

“I am Groot!”

_Get away from him!_

And here they were again. Full circle. Rocket exhaled until his lungs burned. He sucked greedily in again: a cleansing breath that, while it didn’t coax his cock back, at least helped him clear his head. He did his best to ignore the stickiness behind his fly, and directed his words at Yondu:

“Think it’s time we pawned him off on Quill and Gamora?”

Yondu scooped the flailing twig up one-handed. “Definitely,” he agreed.

 

* * *

 

Only problem being that Groot’s protectiveness didn’t stop at Blue. And when Peter heard from Rocket that their jump drive would be ready for a test run come morning-shift, he decided to treat Gamora to some stargazing on the observation deck. This soon descended into snuggling, then necking, and then a small tree shot from a vent and attached itself to his face.

Suffice to say, his shrieks echoed around the _Quadrant_ like the hymn of a tone-deaf choir. Rocket jolted awake – and groaned, as he realized his cheek fuzz had been, until that moment, plastered to Yondu’s bare thigh. Sheesh. He really _would_ go bald at this rate.

Wait. Yondu’s bare thigh. Why was he sleeping on Yondu’s bare thigh?

A glance assured him they were still in the engine room, where Yondu had been keeping him company as he threw himself into the final phases on the repair project. They must’ve nodded off together. Rocket promised results next day cycle and he was determined to deliver, even if it meant sacrificing his Circadian rhythm. How Yondu tempted him into putting his head down for five minutes, Rocket had no clue.

…Or maybe, he did. Yondu, curled on his side in one of Peter's oversized shirts and a pair of crummy boxers, didn’t make for a pretty picture by conventional standards. But Rocket wasn’t a creature of conventional tastes. It would be rather hypocritical, for a start.

Saliva pooled under his tongue. He put it to practical use smoothing his fur flat, licking his paws and gelling down the misbehaving tufts. He was doing a pretty good job of calming himself. Right up until he noticed the sweat crystallized on Yondu’s skin.

Huh. Weird.

Rocket lowered his paws. Grooming could wait. Yondu's chest rose and fell in an uneven race, each breath quicker than the last. The oxygen mask had no time to turn transparent in between the puffs of white. Shit. If he kept this up he really would collapse a lung...

Rocket sat bolt upright, slapping the leg he’d chosen to kip on. “Yondu! Blue! Wake up, c’mon!”

Yondu twitched and kicked. Luckily, his foot didn’t connect. But he’d been a battle slave. Some instincts ran too deep to be dismissed – Rocket knew that better than anyone.

If Yondu donkey-booted him at peak muscle capacity, Rocket would crash straight through his jump drive and out the other side. Then they’d be back to square one, and he’d be first on the menu once their food stocks ran dry.

“Yondu,” he hissed urgently, wracking his brains for anything that might snap him out of it. “Blue, c’mon. I need your help now. Peter needs your help –“

The mention of Quill won a moan rather than a growl, and a side-to-side thrash of Yondu’s head. His arms flailed clumsily, fending off airborne revenants. Not long before he disrupted his breathing apparatus – or broke it entirely. Without the mobile unit, he really _would_ be stuck in the medbay. And while the sheets, pillows, mattress, everything might’ve been stripped and changed and sent three times through a steamer unit on Rocket’s direction, memories weren’t so easy to dispel.

Rocket pounced on the tell. “Quill’s in danger,” he insisted, scurrying up the bench so he was out of kicking range. He still had to dodge the blind claw of Yondu’s hands, as he fought off whatever monster his nightmare had dredged. But it was worth it, to kneel behind his trembling head, the prosthetic bumping his knees, and rest both palms on Yondu’s temples like he could will away the thoughts, drain the pain and the fear and the godawful recollections with his touch.

Luckily, Quill screamed again before Yondu could nut him. Pink eyes snapped open, and Yondu jolted upright fast enough to jar the tube connecting his oxygen mask to the portable tank-pack. Rocket steadied him, wide-eyed. “Uh, steady there, friend –“

“Quill,” Yondu snapped. It was as if a switch had been flicked; he turned on him, fast as a snake, eyes thin and dangerous. Fuck. Yondu'd bulldoze anything that got between him and his son, friends – or whatever else he and Rocket were – notwithstanding.

Rocket raised his hands. “Sounds like he’s yelling ‘Groot’.”

“Oh.” Yondu relaxed. His shoulders drooped, as Rocket had hoped they would. He scrubbed a hand over his face, pulling at the bags beneath his eyes and snagging on the mask. “Guess we oughta go rescue him.”

A ridge of hair had been standing stiffly upright from Rocket’s spine since he realized what was going on. Now, at last, it started its gradual subside. He didn’t bother asking if Yondu wanted to talk. He knew he didn’t – he wouldn’t in his place. But their fingers brushed as Rocket handed him the portable oxypack, for Yondu to clip to the sagging waistband of his boxers.

It wasn’t quite _electric._ Rocket had been shocked too many times to mistake it for that: the little spark of _something_ that fizzled on the surface of their skin. If there was a charge, it wasn't sufficient to fuck with his chip calibrations. But he felt it nevertheless, an effervescent tingle that cavorted down the struts of his bionic spine, making his tail twitch like he was swatting flies.

They rose together, big and small, blue and dun. Their wry grin said all they needed to. No apologies, questions, or ‘thank you for not punting me through a bulkhead in your sleep’. Why say 'em if you didn't need 'em?

“Let’s go rescue my idiot kid from your idiot kid?” Yondu suggested.

Rocket patted the cross-hatch scar on his calf. “Sure thing, Blue. Lead the way.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. Don't have the energy to edit this properly. I'm sorry.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CN: discussion of past rape/noncon, raccoon sex.**

 

They found Groot pillowed on Gamora's bosoms. Peter, predictably, asked if he could get the same treatment and, equally predictably, was glared at, scowled at, and flicked hard enough to bounce off the wall. His ear throbbed, smarting fluorescent, and he stapled his wounded gaze to Yondu – who shook his head with a smirk. “Hell no, kid. You deserved that one.”

“I-I am G-G-Groot.”

“He deserved the other ones too? Groot buddy, what've they done to you?” Rocket wrung his paws, ready to scale Gamora's leg if she didn't hand him over sharpish. Ignoring the wet ring on her shirt – it was rare to see her jacket open, and Rocket had fooled about with enough baldie women to spot that she wasn't wearing a bra – she knelt and relieved herself of her pile of lachrymose twigs.

“Groot seems to have... misinterpreted a situation."

Yondu snorted. It sounded suspiciously close to a laugh, although he’d blame his damaged lungs if confronted. Peter, dusting himself off, sneered until Yondu nodded below his beltline. He stopped posturing in favor of zipping up.

He didn't snag his junk in the teeth, more's the pity. Rendering himself infertile would do the galaxy a favor.

“Seriously? Did you both have to come?” The hatch buzzed open and the remaining Guardians straggled up the ladder to the observation deck, yawning and scratching their assorted mohawks, muscles, and antennae. “Damn. Did you  _all_ have to come?”

“We heard you shriek,” said Drax. Peter frowned.

“It wasn’t a shriek. It was a... A holler. A very manly holler, like anyone would make if Groot jumped out of an air vent mid-coitus.”

Gamora cleared her throat.

“Mid almost-coitus. We were still at foreplay.”

Gamora raised an eyebrow.

“...And that wasn't a cue for me to elaborate. You were trying to tell me to shut my mouth because it's none of their business. Right you are. You heard the lady – nothing to see here!”

Yondu wasn't the only one corpsing. “Naw,” Kraglin said, in between sniggers. “This is better than a Xandarian soap.”

Rocket watched Kraglin out the corner of his eye. Where did they stand? Peter was wise to his intentions regarding his father-figure – supportive too, although Rocket didn't quite dare to believe it. Kraglin tended to be snappier on the uptake than Quill. Plus, he had a stake in his captain himself.

Rocket hadn't been compulsively sniffing Yondu for hints of Kraglin's scent. But if he _happened_ to inhale whenever he passed downwind... So far, Kraglin factored no more in Yondu's complex olfactory signature than Quill - but then again, Quill spent the most time with Yondu outside of Rocket and Groot, so that hardly cut Kraglin off the contenders’ list.

Rocket's hackles bristled. He managed to clamp down on the growl before it wormed through his throat. It bulged there instead, tickling like a swallowed burp, and he bared his teeth at Kraglin in a grin too sharp-edged to be pleasant. “You watch that crap? Any brains you got left'll rot, Skinny.”

Kraglin stuck his nose in the air. “I'll invite ya to me and cap'n's next marathon then. Ya can decide for yerself.”

Rocket might be good at crushing snarls, but betrayal was harder to tamp. He span on Yondu, eyes huge. “ _You_ watch soap operas?” And here he thought he _liked_ the guy.

Yondu studied his fingernails. “Grudgingly. Sometimes.”

“Liar." Rocket couldn't tell whether Kraglin sounded cheerful or fond. Either way, it grated. As did his half-cocked attempt at extending an olive branch, or whatever else that offer was supposed to be. Rocket didn't want it. He wanted Yondu, to himself and only himself. The infatuation was serious; his only chance of banishing Yondu from his thoughts was a road trip to the other side of a galaxy (or failing that, a black hole).

Groot broke the brewing silence. He leapt from the crook of Gamora’s elbow, hitting the ground hard and charging without pausing for breath. A high trill of “ _I am Groot_ ” trembled after him.

He smacked Yondu's ankle and clung there, even after Yondu lifted his foot and squinted at the bushel of bark on top. His arms elongated, pale green shoots that wrapped around and around, strapping Groot to Yondu more securely than the belts in the child-sized seat Rocket had constructed out of oddments from the jump drive. “I am Groot,” he repeated, shoulders heaving, and blew his nose loudly on Yondu's shin.

Yondu sighed. “Twig,” he said, gruffly. Groot raised a tear-stained face. Yondu set his foot flat on the floor. He trudged to the far end of the deck. No indication was made for them to follow, but Rocket trailed him anyway, feeling like an interloper, as if he was eavesdropping as Yondu folded to sit, occupied leg outstretched. Other people's privacy had never bothered him before. Why start caring now?

 _Because it's Yondu,_ whispered an internal voice that Rocket dubbed 'spoilsport'. _Because you already care far too much._

“You gonna come up here?” Yondu provided a hand. Groot shook his head. “Okay.” It looked mighty uncomfortable, but while he griped and grumbled and Rocket heard a worrying _pop_ , Yondu contorted his legs so one tucked under him while the other twisted out besides. “There. Now, I can't sit like this forever. I'll sieze up like a stars-damned hat stand.”

A giggle, however reluctant. Yondu faked a scowl.

“Ya think that's funny, huh Twig? Thought'chu didn't even like hats. But look. I need ya to know. What ya saw in there… in the medbay?”

Groot quivered, clutching harder. He only relinquished his hold at Yondu's grimace, and not all the way – just enough that he wasn't restricting his blood circulation like he planned on amputation.

“Fuck, that's quite a grip you got. But look. In the medbay, me an' that Kree... It were just a game.”

Around him fanned the Guardians, in all their motley glory. Mantis stifled Drax's enquiry about what happened in the medbay with a touch to his forearm. Rocket was the only one to speak: “He knows what death is, Yondu.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about that. Look, Twig. It’s a game adults play with each other. Nothin’ wrong with it, y’hear?”

“I am Groot?”

_But what about…_

Rocket’s ears were good enough to pick out the click in Yondu’s gullet. He watched the bob of his throat and wondered whether he’d –

“Sometimes,” said Yondu, his stare for Groot and Groot alone. “One of them adults ain’t in the mood. That’s why I had to kill him, yeah? Cause he wouldn’t have stopped otherwise.”

Not even a stutter. Nothing but words; delivered plain and unadorned without any detail. Saying so much without giving anything away.

Rocket’s throat dried up. He parched like a chunk of space rock, arid and barren, an un-terraformed asteroid that would never bear life. “Yondu,” he croaked.

“But _nothin' happened,_ ” Yondu continued, chucking the tree under the chin. He didn't register their presence – not even Kraglin, who clenched his fists like he had each one wrapped around a Kree throat, or Quill, who slotted the piecemeal story together, and looked more discomforted by every word. Certainly not Rocket, as he fumed in impotent silence, a barrage of loathing directed within.

Yondu asked for a gun. Rocket didn’t give him one. This could all have been averted, if he’d only –

“Nothin’ happened." Yondu's glare switched between them: the tree clinging to his ankle and the rodent a heartbeat from crumpling close beside. “So stop worryin’. I’m fine, Twig. I killed that one, and I killed every one who came before him, an’ if it ever happens again –“

“It ain’t going to." Rocket heard the words from a great distance, as if they were puppeteered from his mouth. He glowered at the lot of them – at Quill, the revelation bugging out his eyes; at Drax, slow on the uptake but at least fathoming that now was not the time to ask; at Gamora, whose delicate features scrunched with concern; at Mantis, chin wrinkled and antennae waggling as she read the mood of the room; and at Kraglin, who tipped him the smallest of nods. So they could unite over protecting their captain. That was good. But Rocket didn’t need his approval.

“Sorry,” he said, huffing with a shrug. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Yondu could be basking under starlight, if you ignored the crampy yoga pose and the leafy protrusion on his shin. It bathed him, a silvery cascade that flowed through the overhead glass. He’d chosen the most picturesque spot of the lot. Had he not been so wary of ruining the moment, Rocket would’ve warned him that Peter and Gamora may well have selected that self-same patch for their two-backed beasting, before a high velocity cannonball of vegetation brought their fumbling to a halt.

“Twig." Yondu fastened the oxygen mask over his nose and took a fortifying breath. “Look at me.”

Groot did, albeit shakily. Yondu swept the pad of a finger around his cheeks, mopping the tears away.

“Yer a good kid,” he told him, hooking the mask on its clip. “Jus’ tryin’ to help. I get that. But there’s some things you shouldn’t have to help with. Some things you shouldn’t have to see. Cause yer a kid.”

“I am Groot –“

“Yeah, yeah, big for your age, heard it all before. Fact remains. Kids deserve better. I’m sorry ya saw that, kid, and I wish I could make it go away again. But I can’t. So I’m just gonna have to tell you I’m okay, and yer just gonna have to believe me, cause at the end of the day I don’t got nothin’ else. Can ya try that for me now, Twig?”

Twig wiped his own eyes that time. He managed a nod. “I am Groot.”

Yondu’s smile spread. Laughter lines folded, as he revealed every capped silver tooth. “Best damn Twig I know.”

Ugh. Ask him five minutes ago to choose the guy least likely to give him cavities, and he'd have picked Yondu. Color him disappointed.

Rocket wasn’t so engrossed in the saccharine scene that he missed Peter sloping away, or Gamora slipping her hand into his. It didn’t take an empath to understand what Quill must be going through – although Mantis laid her hand on his shoulder, over leather rather than flesh, and offered a comforting squeeze.

Yondu might act the model grandparent for Groot, but he was no natural virtuoso. Peter suffered the trial and error, every snaggle and glitch along the way. He was entitled to a little resentment. He was also entitled to a freak out, given the revelation that not only had _something bad_ happened under their very own hull plates, but judging by Yondu’s run-on sentence at the end of his spiel, it had _happened before,_ at a time when Yondu had neither scalpel nor arrow for self-defence.

Rocket certainly wasn’t handling it well. Neither was he handling Yondu’s blasé spillage of his sob-story, as if the shit he suffered at the hands of the Kree belonged in casual conversation. Rocket tried to imagine swapping stories of his own ordeals, of lunar cycles strapped to lab tables while they fine-tuned the auxiliary mechanics in his legs.

He felt sick. He was so used to understanding Yondu, so used to gleaning everything about him from a glance. This fork between their coping methods, or whatever the fuck this was, branched too far apart to ever be reconciled.

He sneered at his paws. “Drax, take Groot. I wanna talk to Yondu alone.”

Drax nodded, rocking the toddler in a cradle of biceps. As always, he fell into the rhythms of fatherhood far too easily. “I will crush anyone who hurts you,” he said as he passed, winning a snort and a pair of raised bald brows.

“I’d settle for Rat fixin’ my arrow so I can do the crushin’ myself.”

“The offer still stands." Drax motioned for Mantis to join him. She too paused by Yondu, hand outstretched. But when Yondu only shot it – and her, a little unjustly – a scathing look, she scurried away. Drax glanced over his shoulder, before he draped Groot onto it like a tiny wooden towel and set off for his bunk to make the most of the night cycle.

Considering their interrupted sleep, they could always set the chronometer back an hour and have themselves a lie in. But mess with ship-time too much and you’d be completely out-of-whack once you made port. Jet lag was never fun. Best stick to Xandarian Central Time – and pop an extra caffeine pill in the morning. Thanks to the Kree, they had quite the stockpile.

Tomorrow, they disengaged from the Kree ship – or rather, what was left of it. It had a designation, which Rocket hadn’t bothered to learn. It was due an ignoble death: to hang here in the black between trade routes, populated only by scum and rogues, until it was torn apart by a comet or drawn into the gravitational lull of the nearest star.

Then came the jump drive test. That would challenge Rocket’s engineering ingenuity, which he didn't doubt, and the _Quadrant’s_ capacity for integrating souped-up Kree mechanics, in which he was rather less confident. But Rocket refused to worry about that until his paw hovered over the warp button. Not when Yondu was right there: slouched on his plinth like the galaxy’s ugliest centerpiece, watching Rocket approach with low-lidded eyes.

“Why’d you say that?” Rocket asked. He didn’t mean to, but once he started he couldn't stop; stuffing the quiescent circle of starlight with question after question. “In front of everyone? What the hell! Don’t you care what they think of you?”

Yondu arranged himself cross-legged. Rocket gulped as his tatty boxers slid, revealing coquettish glimpses of thigh. They left little to the imagination (although Rocket’s still ran rampant, narrating a fantasy of licking the fabric until it clung).

“I don’t like secrets,” he said, scratchy with the effort of maintaining low volume. “Secrets make you weak. I ain’t never hidden who I am, what I am, where I come from. Cause if ya tuck somethin’ away in the dark too long ya start to fear it. An’ if you start to fear it…”

Rocket thought of lying in his cage, a biomechanical spine afloat in the tank of preservative opposite. He thought of table restraints and pain sensor trials and hooks sliding under his fur. “It controls you.”

“Exactly.”

Rocket swallowed. “So when you told me about being a slave, I wasn’t the only one who knew?”

Certainly, Kraglin hadn’t seemed surprised – like Peter hadn’t looked horrified by the scars around Yondu’s neck when they stripped him before his immersion in the meditube. It shouldn’t matter. What Yondu revealed to him, the link it forged? Just because Rocket wasn’t the only one to share those stories, know what hells the old man had suffered, only to come crawling out the other side, shaken and fractured but so very far from broken, it didn't dilute the enormity of what they shared.

But Rocket couldn’t help himself. He wanted assurance. He needed to know that in some way, no matter how negligible, he meant more to Yondu than anyone else.

Yondu shook his head. He pushed slowly to stand.

“M’real glad you came,” he said. Rocket was about to make a crack about sudden segues and dementia (could that still be classed as ‘early-onset’ after you’d peaked sixty?) when Yondu elucidated his point. “In the medbay. Had to turn off the mic when I heard them sniffin’ about outside, so I didn’t know whether you’d realized. Didn’t think no one was comin’. But. Ya did.”

His sentences were shrinking again. Rocket started towards the oxygen mask, but Yondu beat him to it. He turned it in his hands rather than snapping it on, talking fast so he could say everything he meant to before his airways distorted like plasma tubes under heat stress. “You came back. In the _Quadrant,_ with Peter. And in the medbay. _You keep turnin' up._ Like a weighted fuckin' unit chit at a casino -”

“Course I do, idiot.” Rocket closed the gap, staring up at Yondu’s downturned face. “I’d do anything for you.” He meant every word, and would say them over and over, as often as it took for Yondu to believe him.

Yondu’s knees hit the floor. The clang made Rocket’s defence procedures snap online; they pumped adrenaline from his muscles before the noise fully registered.

At first, he thought Yondu had collapsed. But before he could yell for help – stars knew he wasn’t dragging his wide-load ass to the medbay – a hand cupped his chin. Rocket could only comply when Yondu pulled him forwards – just like he could only purr at the mash of warm blue lips on his, the card of crusty nails through his fur, the taste of Yondu’s breath.

That was worse than it smelled. But hey, Rocket wasn’t exactly a perfumery. He couldn’t judge.

They only had three seconds before Yondu had to break away, hacking into his fist. Rocket helped him fit the mask, lips buzzing at the end of his snout. He placed those three seconds amongst the best in his life thus far.

“Well,” he said, unable to process anything but  _Yondu,_ sour and addictive, nicotine on the tip of his tongue _._ “That answers my next question, of 'is this when we make out'.”

“Might... need... a minute...” Yondu wheezed, one hand pressed against his chest as if he could coax his lungs open with pressure.

Rocket couldn't stop smiling. He tapped his chronometer to bring up the stopwatch function, and swivelled the dials to where he wanted them, plopping down besides Yondu to wait. “Don't worry, Blue. I've started the clock.”

 

* * *

 

 

The minute crept by slow as water-torture. Rocket couldn’t stop looking at Yondu, couldn’t stop the quiet, happy chirrs in his chest. His whiskers twitched and his tail curled, anticipation squirming tighter in his gut.

 _He’d kissed Yondu._ Or rather, Yondu kissed him – which was even better, because it meant Rocket wasn’t being gaslighted by the universe.

This was actually _happening._ Yondu liked him like he liked Yondu. He didn’t find his coarse fur repugnant, or the touch of his scaly, horny hands. He hadn’t shoved him away.

What were they? A pair of idiots, trapped in a universe that gave them nothing besides grief and heartbreak. Oh, there was a Peter here, a Groot there. But now they had each other too.

Rocket kissed Yondu. And very soon – once Yondu’s lungs stopped trying to catapult out his mouth like rocks from a mangonel – he would kiss him again.

And so he did. As soon as Yondu lowered the mask, Rocket was on him, knocking into him with enough force to send him backwards – _whoops –_ and planting a hand on either side of his head so he could have the illusion of pinning him to the ground.

Their mouths weren’t exactly a puzzle-piece fit. Rocket’s wet nose left smears through Yondu’s stubble. Yondu’s natural inclination to twist to the side – like if he was kissing another baldie, another baldie like Kraglin – earned him a lip snagged on Rocket’s fang and then, when he hissed, a mouthful of slippery tongue.

Rocket _m_ _oaned._ He’d been yearning for this, craving it like a good grooming after a day in the engine rooms. He knew he ought to slow it down, savor it, compartmentalize every moment into his long-term memory.

And yet… Here was Yondu. Now, in the moment, his blue block of a face clasped between Rocket’s paws. The surprise only held him frozen for a moment. Then he relaxed back, twisting so his weight wasn’t on his prosthetic. His eyes were crescents, squinted from the breadth of his smile.

Rocket tried to find an angle where he could slot his tongue in Yondu’s mouth without drooling all over himself. When you had a snout, this was quite the challenge. Finally, he gave into the indignity and concentrated on the sensation – the way Yondu’s beard hairs scratched his muzzle, the rank rake of his breath. Rocket twitched towards it, nose wet as a dog’s. The smell registered as _interesting_ , like how he had to remind himself not to sniff the overflowing garbage ports whenever they stopped on Knowhere.

He groaned again. It became a growl when Yondu opened his mouth a little wider. His hand spanned Rocket’s shoulders from one side to the other, then snuck down to cup the base of his tail.

Did he know about the scent glands there? Probably not. And yet…

Rocket’s legs went weak, where he knelt over Yondu’s scarred throat. He arched, trying to keep his mouth plastered on Yondu’s and raise his tail all at once. Yondu chuckled. He massaged Rocket’s balls, agitating the glands by accident. Rocket wracked, a full body quiver, when wetness seeped against his pants. Fuck. He could smell it – his own damn pheromones, dripping through the cotton.

His dick, long since unsheathed, twitched against his inseam. The internal bone vibrated, fizzling through Rocket like he’d been hit with a blast of ionizing radiation that cooked him from the inside out. He needed to put it in him, stars. Needed to fuck him, buzz inside him, make Yondu feel like he felt now…

Yondu trailed his talon along Rocket’s clothed cock. He might as well have cranked a starter-motor. Rocket broke from Yondu’s lips, head tossed back and muzzle pursed in a soundless howl.

When he came back to himself, the inside of his jumpsuit swum in a cocktail of jizz and sticky scent-secretion. Yondu winked at him close distance. His lashes cast shadows on raddled blue cheeks.

“Damn,” he whispered. His drawl dribbled sparks down Rocket’s mechanical spine. He shivered, still a little slack-jawed from the orgasm, as Yondu crooked his fingers – fingers that smelt of _Rocket_ – under his chin. “Ain’t that a sight.”

Rocket gave himself a second to simply _relish._ Then reality came flooding in – and with it, embarrassment. He’d cum within five minutes – so much for convincing Yondu he wasn’t a kid. And to top it off… Well, he hadn’t exactly reciprocated.

He nipped Yondu’s finger, the one closest to his mouth. “My turn,” he said, trying to make it sultry. He didn’t feel nervous, strange though that may seem. This was right. This was what was meant to be. He’d dreamt of learning the systems and command keys of Yondu’s body, putting his attention to detail to work at pleasuring him. Having Yondu fumbling around his cock was nice – damn nice, the cream in Rocket’s pants attested to that. But if Rocket was prone to bouts of violent jealousy over anything he considered _his_ , he was just as possessive and controlling when it came to sex.

He wanted to learn. To soak up every sensory input, to train himself to make Yondu cum until it was as natural and satisfying as patching scripts in a pre-flight check program; until Yondu couldn’t control himself, couldn’t hold back, could only give in to the pleasure.

To start with though, he had to get into his pants.

This was harder than it should be. His squirm down Yondu’s body halted before he reached his non-existent navel. Rocket could escape. He was slippery as a hagfish when he wanted to be (quite literally, on the insides of his suit). But there were some ‘no’s you didn’t ignore. Not with anyone, but especially not with Yondu.

“Not in the mood?” he said, feigning cheer. “It’s okay. Headache – we’ve all been there.”

Jovial though he might sound, his guts unravelled inside him. The suspicion started as a mote, but it grew fast as a cancer, spreading from cell to cell. There was a big difference between getting the furry freak off through fabric, and letting him fondle your junk.

Rocket twisted, not quite a writhe so much as an indication that he wouldn’t mind being freed. Yondu let him go. He pushed onto his elbows as soon as Rocket vacated his chest.

“Rat –“

“You don’t gotta explain. I geddit.”

The front of his pants clung to his fur, cum cold and pungent. There was a corresponding damp stripe on Yondu’s collarbone, over where Rocket had been sitting – okay, okay; and grinding a little bit too. Rocket cussed. He tried to wipe it, as best he could – but Yondu shook his head, twitching away.

What, he didn’t even want him to _touch_ him now? Talk about mood whiplash.

“Regrets, huh?” Rocket’s smile was too wide for his face; it felt like it was hanging off the edges, revealing how far sharp yellow teeth burrowed into his skull. “Usually takes longer to hit.”

“Rat –“

“Save it. I’m going – and for the record, before this turns into a blame game? You kissed me first.”

“Rat! Dammit, would ya just _listen –_ “

Rocket bounded away. He almost made it to the hatch, before he was brought up short by a whistle.

It took him a full thirty seconds, snapped to attention with hairs stippling all over his body. Then the realization smacked with the force of a high-speed space crash. Of course. The arrow lay snapped, connection broken, prosthetic offline. And Yondu? Yondu was a massive fucking a-hole.

“Not funny,” he snarled, not bothering to turn.

Yondu let the note die, although Rocket’s ears kept ringing, tinnitus too shrill and sweet for the situation at hand. “Flark, Rat. You wanna fuck me so bad? Go ahead. S'all yours.” Spoken crass – like this was a challenge, a pissing contest. Like Yondu was testing how far he could go, before Rocket's touch went from tolerable to loathsome.

And Rocket thought he was different.

“Fuck yourself,” was his pithy rejoinder. Then he popped the hatch, and vaulted into the darkness beyond.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WE GOT NOOKIE!!!! And uh. Misunderstandings. Yaaaay. I usually hate this sort of plot device, but it's impossible NOT to fall into it with Rocket. He's got such a massive chip on his shoulder! But seriously, Rocket. If a dude recently got almost-raped again, _chances are it's not you_**


	10. Chapter 10

Rocket didn’t sleep. By the time morning rolled around, the Kree ship’s plasma-efficient light fittings replaced the crackly old solars in the hangar. Their shields had been amplified, and their jump drive awaited its test run, polished top to tail, a grey-black monolith erected on Rocket’s workbench. Rocket tinkered and tweaked and tinkered and tweaked, until the clatters of the crew fetching breakfast trickled through the buzz in his brain. 

The work didn’t calm him. Tough shit – he had no other coping mechanisms. It was unnecessary repairs or the airlock.

By the time Yondu staggered through the door, preceded by his usual wheeze, the atmosphere was frosty. At his entrance, it took a swift dive to glacial, then further, until it ought to be measured on the kelvin scale.

“Rat,” he said, by way of greeting.

He didn’t owe the old bastard shit. Not conversation, not morning niceties. Not even the chance to apologize. 

The facts of the matter were simple. The universe played a prank at his expense. A pantheon of cosmic deities chuckled among themselves, luring Rocket closer and closer to his star, until finally - _whoof._ Combustion. All he got out of it was burnt hair and a scalded nose. And a crippling sense of shame, of course, which smarted worse than the rejection and the anger combined.

How could he be so stupid? How could he ever fool himself that Yondu might love him back?

Yondu put forth a genuine effort, but Rocket was no one’s project. If fate assigned him a partner, he refused to be a challenge in their eyes. He’d settled for that before, several times too many; women who gave out fake names and burner comms, men who let him fuck them, but only from behind. This betrayal though? It ached worse than any morning-after that preceded it.

He tightened a lugnut on their spare air filter box in answer – Yondu’s arrow had been relegated to the bottom of the repairs pile. It made a nails-on-blackboard shriek. Yondu’s hearing was less fine-tuned than Rocket’s; he might as well be deafening himself to spite his own eardrums. Worth it though, for Yondu’s wince.

“What the hell –“

Rocket gave the nut another twist.

“If this’s yer way of tellin’ me to fuck off –“

Another.

“Yer gonna break that if you ain’t –“

A vindictive wrench. The bolt snapped. It flew toward the forcefield. Half of Rocket’s spanner skittered away in the other direction, to join the cobwebs lacing the landing plates of the empty M-ship dock.

“Careful,” finished Yondu, as Rocket reeled backwards and sat heavily on his tail. He resolved to lob the rest of his spanner if Yondu dared say _I told you so._ But there was only a grumbling sigh, and the creak of knee joints as Yondu lowered himself besides him, oxygen pack batting his thigh.

Rocket sneered at his broken tool, clenching the sting from his palms. “That weren’t no invitation.”

Yondu did what Yondu did best, ignoring everything that didn’t pertain to what he wanted to hear. He settled more comfortably, tucking a foot. “Hell, Rat. Yer stroppier than Peter when he was a boy.”

If he hoped to vindicate himself, he made a shoddy job of it. Rocket _glared._ Yondu raised his hands – the same hands that handled him so gently the night before. Rocket tried not to shiver at the phantom graze of fingers on his cock, and, when that proved too difficult, transmuted it into a snarl.

Yondu nodded, like he understood. “Not a kid. Gotcha.”

After their milking, Rocket's scent glands wizened, gnarled and dry as oak galls. He wanted to get through the conversation without an unsheathed dick interrupting him, but Yondu made that difficult. He shuffled closer, unsticking his mask so Rocket didn't even have the mist of his breath to distract him from wet blue lips.

“You can fuck me, y’know,” he said, eyes fixed on Rocket's. His tongue peeped out, drawing a sketchy circle like he was moistening up for a whistle. Or just trying to precipitate a kiss – Rocket didn't know which he'd prefer. “Y'know. If it means so damn much to ya, an' all.”

Rocket’s fist squeezed. His half of the spanner dented: an icy ingot crushed by the hydraulics that fastened his arm muscles to the elbow joint. “Your crusty ass ain't worth a consolation prize.”

Yondu's tongue retreated. “That what you think this is?”

Rocket wasn’t in the mood for playing games. “You want a cock,” he snarled, “go bounce on Kraglin’s.”

“Kraglin? The hell does this got to do with _Kraglin?_ ”

“I don’t know!” He _hated_ those tearducts. Why did a glorified maintenance droid need them? Or had they simply not gotten around to removing them, by the time he released himself to the wild? Rocket wouldn’t necessarily suffer another week in the facility in exchange for the ability not to cry when he was frustrated or sad or – damn it all – heartbroken. But he might be tempted. “You tell me!”

Yondu groaned, knuckling between his eyes – then at the scar on his temple, where it looked like someone had pinned him to a wall or a floor or a bed and cross-hatched him for a sick game of tic-tac-toe. “You are the most hysterical, _infuriatin’_ lil’ –“

“If you’re just going to insult me,” seethed Rocket, glaring at his paws until they stopped wobbling in and out of focus, “you could at least have the courtesy to do it outta my earshot.”

Yondu stood, as Rocket had known he would. “This ain’t what yer brain’s tellin’ you,” he said, as he strode for the exit. “Offer’s open tonight, is all I’m sayin’. Ain’t like I got nothin’ else on my schedule.” His grin flared, there and gone again, a match guttering in the wind. “You can even play _Wild Horses_ while we nookie, if that’s what gets you goin’.”

Idiot. Showed how much he knew; Rocket would never defile the sanctity of _Wild Horses._ That song held a reverential place in Rocket’s chest. It bore with it the promise of something beautiful, something that had briefly come into fruition, but rotted to sludge before Rocket got more than a sniff.

Really, he thought as he stomped to the waste pod, inputted the base polymers that made up his spanner, and delivered it to the matter processers via a series of pneumatic tubes. Love wasn’t worth the hyperbole.  _Wild Horses_ would never grace the speakers again.

…Except Yondu claimed this wasn’t what he thought. Rocket’s overactive mind turned those words over and over, like he turned the second spanner half, which he’d retrieved from its resting place amid the fossilized husks of spiders past.

He fluffed cobwebs from his fur. This incident proved his suspicions that the universe used him as an Aesop, an example to remind future generations that hope only ever heralded disappointment.

But there was a chance. Maybe a conversation with Kraglin would help? If it got violent, Rocket didn't much care. Shooting someone would put a silver lining on the day.

 

* * *

 

 

He found Kraglin on the Bridge. He was manning the relays – which translated to softly serenading a bowl of mixed vegetables pilfered from the Kree ship’s larder. He shut up sharpish when he spotted Rocket’s furry head, but considering that bobbed several feet below his sight line, it took him a while. Rocket didn’t blame him – they'd been crunching their fiber intake in pill form for so long that he'd get musical over yaro root too, albeit from the other end. He also didn't bother hiding his snigger.

“Stay sat,” he said, scrambling onto the chair besides him. “I got some questions in need of answering.”

Kraglin, lowering himself again, kicked his boots up on the console. “Yer shackin’ up with cap’n.”

Rocket resisted his urge to bash his head on the nearest solid surface. That was the observation glass, and considering how much cybernetic reinforcement they’d given his skull on Halfworld, he actually had a chance of cracking it. “That obvious?”

“I’m Hraxian. Good sense of smell. Yours? S'all over him.”

Rocket’s eyes thinned. “He came to see you?”

“Well, yeah. He ain’t sleepin’ in the medbay an' yer mad at him. Peter’s got his green lass –“

“Gamora.”

“Who's that leave?”

Rocket deflated. It made sense. At the very least, he eked satisfaction that Kraglin was a rebound. Nice to know he wasn't the only one being used. “You,” he said. Kraglin nodded.

“So,” he prompted, when they went for a minute uninterrupted, Rocket swinging moody legs over the chair edge. “You gonna talk, or did ya just want sulkin’ company? I can do either, is all.”

 _Well,_ sneered a voice in Rocket’s head. _Ain’t he eager to please._

“What’s it like?” If he never got the real deal, he could at least live vicariously. “Y’know. Fucking Yondu?”

The silence lasted no longer second time around, but it sure felt it. When Rocket dragged his gaze up, insult locked and loaded behind his teeth, he found Kraglin staring bug-eyed at their mirror images. “Oh. _Oh._ Shit.” His voice honked like he'd been given a tracheostomy with a kazoo. “You... you thought… Flarkin’… Frutark…”

Rocket tapped his chronometer. “You gonna say anything useful, or should I go make sure our jump drive don't turn into a singularity soon as I switch it on?” That'd be a shame, considering the hours he’d poured into it. Although being swallowed by an event horizon, atoms stretched and compressed and dragged through several simultaneous rips in space-time, ranked preferable to another day on this ship.

"I'm jus' sayin', what you think..."

Crossing his arms, Rocket sat higher, spine grinding straight. He sneered at Kraglin’s reflection in return. “What do you mean ‘I think’? Course I think! Ain’t that what’s going on – Yondu wanted some _tail_ on the side –“

Kraglin rubbed his ratty moustache. “Yondu were right. Ya really _are_ hysterical.”

Rocket readied his punching hand. Rocket released the fist. Rocket concentrated on breathing out, long and slow as biomechanical lungs could manage.

“You’re. _Not_ sleeping with Yondu?”

Groaning, Kraglin slumped until his torso fit the curve of the pilot's seat. “Do I look like a guy who's gotten laid recently?”

Rocket scarcely dared believe it. “Seriously?”

“Hey, don't get me wrong, I'd fuck him if he'd let me. But we have... Uh, incompatible interests.”

Whichever deity pulled the strings of Rocket's life, he was a right jackass. Giving him hope, then snatching it away.

Rocket drooped. He wasn't _opposed_ to keeping his physical contact with Yondu limited to hand-paw holding and the occasional snog. But his nights would forever be tortured by the thought of blue legs spread for him to tinker between them, like the open-cracked maintenance panel on a ship...

“He's into pussy.”

Kraglin shrugged. “Who don't dig boobs? Nah, 'm sayin' boss only hooks up with bots. Has done since we met. Male or female or whatever else's goin' cheap. One thing's for sure though – all they’ve got in their heads is circuitry.”

 _Same as me,_ Rocket thought. But he knew what Kraglin meant. He knew all too well.

He’d done Yondu wrong, jumping to conclusions like that. Getting so wound up in his Past Shit that he couldn’t see Yondu's hang-ups for his own, which swayed opaque over his vision like bodies dangling from a gibbet. 

So what could he do about it? Devolve into a self-loathing coil? Find somewhere small and dark to pack himself, where he'd never be found? No. That was the Rocket of last year talking. Kraglin would contact Yondu. The git would stagger here, feeble as a flarkin' plague victim, and dedicate himself to perking Rocket up in that infuriating _caring-but-pretending-not-to_ way of his. Or he’d make him laugh, or (heaven forbid) cuddle him. Like Rocket deserved comfort.

The moment Groot's sapling arms waved from his pot, Rocket's life changed forever. It forced him to prioritize, become _responsible._ An actual functioning adult – or as close to it as Rocket got. And functioning adults acknowledged when they were in the wrong.

_We ain't stealing batteries no more._

Rocket needed to own up for this. And he knew exactly how to go about it.

 

* * *

 

 

First though: business. Rocket’s latest invention had been installed in the engines, hooked to the cockpit via plasma relay: a jump drive devised from three different ships, a little bit of gum-tack, and a whole lot of hope.

The hope came from the rest of the crew. Rocket didn’t need it. He already knew it would work. 

Mantis shot him a smile when he strutted onto the Bridge an hour later.

“You are excited,” she observed. Rocket's whiskers twitched.

“When'd you touch me?” If he was too distracted to notice a petting it didn't bode well for the drive test. Mantis bounced about on her toes.

“I am learning to differentiate expressions using only my vision! It is very fun. Peter pulls the most magnificent faces.”

“ _Anyway,_ ” said Peter, stepping in front of her before Rocket could demand a performance. “Have you seen Yondu? He’s not here yet, and I don't want him rattling around your hangar in High-G.”

Blue had become such a fixture in Rocket's peripherals that he missed him now he wasn't. “Sleeping, most likely.” Rocket bore no grudge - in itself a small miracle. As they flew toward Ego, Yondu warned Rocket that if he kept pushing people away, one day they wouldn’t bounce back. Now he’d gone and proved his own hypothesis. His chat with Kraglin gave him an idea for reconciliation, but if that failed... Well, Rocket didn’t know what came next.

No time for those thoughts. Groot waved at him, perched on Gamora’s outstretched hand. She made an excellent seat. Her cybernetics pervaded her more thoroughly than Yondu, or even Rocket’s own; she wouldn’t tire of that pose if she held it for the better part of an astral-year. Rocket only knew one person more augmented than she was - but it was better to keep Gamora away from discussions where Nebula was concerned.

He returned the little guy’s wave. Relishing their expectant gazes, he amped up the bombast, hopping onto a chair and atop the consoles from there. He stood with legs wide and grin wider, pointing to the star-strewn sky.

“Alright, kids! I see none of you have strapped in. You’re gonna regret that.”

“You ain’t strapped in neither,” Kraglin pointed out. “Or cap’n. And ya wouldn’t do nothin’ to hurt him, so I’m takin’ the time to put my boots up.” The boots in question wriggled, propped where Rocket had left them sixty revolutions of an astral clock ago. Rocket kicked the nearest.

“Hey, this here’s sensitive equipment! Don’t you have respect for your own damn ship?”

“If the _Quadrant_ couldn’t take a foot restin’ on her every now an’ again, she wouldn’ta lasted long. Not with Ravagers at her helm.”

Rocket supposed he had a point. He didn't argue, still swimming with relief from Kraglin’s earlier revelation. A selfish and slinky delight, to have Yondu all to himself.

Y’know. If Blue still wanted him, after this.

Drax made the Bridge creak when he dispersed his weight over the nearest chair. “Do we not have a jump drive to test?”

Peter sighed. “Has no one told you patience is a virtue?”

“Yes, you inferred much the same when I was complaining about our supply levels last week. Now, as then, I would like to remind you that patience is only considered meritorious for certain interstellar faiths. On my planet, for example, impulsion is far more highly prized…”

“Alright, alright. Now I’m the one getting bored.” Rocket clapped his paws. The Yondu-situation couldn’t dampen his spirits. Anticipation flurried like the churn of dust in a hoover. He loved nothing more than completing a puzzle, and the jump drive had been one of his most challenging to date. “Strap in, boys, girls, and Groot. Kraglin – comm your captain. Wherever he is, tell him he’d better hold on tight…”

“I’m here, I’m here. Stars, don’t let the Orloni run before they’re baited.”

Yondu looked sleep-rumpled and more than a little breathless. He made his bushwhacked way up the ladder, mask affixed. He shot Rocket a cursory glance – and it would’ve stayed like that, if Rocket’s grin didn’t make him double-take. “Huh. Ya look mighty cheerful there, Rat. Comin' down with somethin'?”

Surly as ever. Rocket wouldn’t have him any other way. “Glad you’re here, is all." He pointed him to the spare seat in the corner. “Easier to resuscitate you if you pass out this way. It’d take us ages to go through the ship with a detector for all them gold fillings of yours.”

Yondu slouched as ordered. He strapped the belts together, tugging to make sure they were secure. “I ain’t faintin’, Rat.”

“Twenty units says you do.”

“Thirty on the captain,” said Kraglin immediately, and then everyone had to pitch in. Rocket sat in the midst of the bickering as Yondu accused Peter of betraying his daddy – first time he’d bandied that word since they floated in hard-vac  – to which Peter retorted that he was just being pragmatic, like Yondu taught him. Drax agreed with Peter, Mantis sneakily brushed Yondu’s hand and declared herself on his side after sensing his resolution, and Groot was unanimously voted as too young for gambling (which he protested, until Yondu presented him with a tub of his favorite candies. Dammit, did Blue _want_ Groot’s teeth to look like his?) Gamora professed to be too mature for such things. But, after her crew’s resounding encouragement (loud jeering, more like), she sided with Yondu. Must be trying to cosy up to the in-law. She received a magnanimous nod for her troubles.

Only one way to choose a winner. Rocket bounced to his chair, donned his belts, checked over his shoulder that Gamora had Groot encased in a cage of fingers, and slammed the button down hard.

If space had sound, the ship would’ve popped like as a wet finger from a cheek. They squirted from hyperspace, a plug from a blowhole. Rocket unstuck himself from his seat to find all systems within the green zone, and nobody dead. That was what he called a successful experiment.

As for Yondu? A touch frail, but no worse for wear. His lungs crackled like tissue paper, even as he shot Rocket a victorious smirk. “How much ya owe me?”

Rocket affected hurt. “Not even a thanks?”

“Ya get that after ya do the math, an' transfer dem units to my account.” Unstrapping, he hobbled for the cockpit ladder, coat slapping his bare calves.

Rocket waited for the clank of the engaging maglock on the hatch. He plugged in their coordinates, hunched over the nav gear.

Peter frowned, leaning to see. “What’re you doing?”

“Directing us towards the nearest hospital that’s unaffiliated with any Empire.” Rocket kept his voice bright and bubbly, as it should be after such a resounding demonstration of his intellect. He’d like to see the lot of them together manage what he’d just accomplished – but celebration could wait. They’d all noticed Yondu’s ailing lungs. With their medbay trashed thanks to the shoot out, they simply didn’t have the facilities to do anything about it.

But the shrinks on Knowhere would. Rocket cycled the dial until the final letter clicked into position, and checked the jump drive's heat core. Running a little hotter than he liked; best let her cool off before propelling them into the next wormhole. Last thing they wanted was it to close while they were halfway through. “Old man ain’t allowed to croak 'til after I do.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm a slut for characters LEARNING from their past mistakes rather than just continuing to make them - hence why Rocket hasn't reverted back to his Vol 1 personality here (pet peeve alert XD).**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **I meant to get this up during the week, but got distracted by my Big Bang fic, _You and Me Going Fishing in the Dark._ Give it a shot if you're a Kragdu fan! ;)**  
>   
> 
> ****
> 
> ****  
> **Comments/kudos = love!**  
>   
> 
> ****


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **More Racon Fuky. For anyone who doesn't check the tags - this chapter (and a few following ones) star Yondu's pussy.**

They were in there somewhere.

Rocket adjusted the mirror. He barricaded the bathroom door half an hour ago, expecting to be finished in good time. In hindsight, he should've factored for longer. Brain surgery tended to be fiddly, especially when self-performed.

Yondu built his reputation on being unpredictable. However, routine underpinned even the wiliest of men, and chronometers could be set by Udonta's weekly shower.

This shower occurred seven times fewer than the other nostril-bearing crewmembers would like (with the exception of Kraglin, who didn’t care, and Rocket, who had an embarrassing thing for musk). The bathing was medically recommended, on behalf of their depleted medical stock. If Yondu's immune system failed, jump starting it would be nigh impossible.

And so, once every seven cycles, Yondu walked the green mile to the wash racks. Once there he soaped himself up for five minutes, sporting a grimace more befitting of a torture victim. Then he rinsed off, dried, and stomped to bed like the galaxy's most disgruntled blue sphinx-cat.

Until today.

“If this is revenge, I ain’t complainin'!” Yondu sat with his back to the shower door: the gentlest siege that Rocket had ever been beleaguered by. Why, he almost thought Yondu wasn’t making an effort to get in at all. “Yer givin’ me a get-outta-wet free card!”

Rocket had disabled his voice function, just in case of screams. But he was nearly finished, and the pain wasn’t as intense as he feared. The scientists on Halfworld ripped him apart enough times that a self-performed vivisection was more like nicking yourself on a nail than cracking your skull open.

Rocket performed a similar operation five years back, extracting his tracking chip and his automated self-destruct. Turned out it was just like riding a bike.

He picked the chip off the table, tweezered between his claws. Reaching behind his head, he felt for the corresponding divot. When he slotted it into place, his modulated vocal cords twanged with static: the cybernetic version of a belch.

“Why you hate showers so much anyway?” He hadn’t said sorry yet. Words became trite the more you repeated them; Rocket wanted to save his apology until he looked at Yondu face to face. Which would be soon. Once he'd removed the screwdriver sticking out the top of his head, and re-hinged the cranial plate that gaped like the jaw of a gluttonous snake. The old guy already suffered from disturbed sleep; Rocket didn’t want to add to his nightmare fuel.

Yondu thunked his prosthetic off the door. “Easier to clean up the mess in there,” he said quietly. “Any Pureblood c'n take a slave to the showers, so long as they have ‘em back fresh-washed in the hour. Keepers ain't none the wiser. Else they don't give a shit – never worked that one out.”

Rocket shut his eyes, mentally reciting every torment he'd like to inflict on those nameless Kree. He enjoyed taking people apart – preferably on a bed, with his tongue and buzzing dick and clever little paws. But he could do it with his mechanical tools as well. While he struggled to put them back together again afterwards, in this case that was hardly a concern.

“I'm nearly done.” He brushed the serrated edge of a chip, interred amid squidgy tissue. His grin was drool-flecked; must've nudged something. Best be careful. Whatever he felt for Yondu, it wasn't worth him shorting his circuits and reverting to a dumb animal.

He got a good grip on the chip, and _pulled_ like he was removing a rotten tooth. The wet pop made him shudder, and the coldness inside his head disorientated him. Nose twitching, he ran the bloody segment under the tap. It was waterproofed; had to be for immersion in a brain that was, as most brains tended to be, eighty percent liquid. A blast of the dryer, carefully aimed so as not to melt anything delicate, and he slid the chip into his comms-watch, reading the words to himself one by one.

He'd never done this before. Had considered it, certainly – but a big part of him didn't want to know.

“Okay,” he whispered, rubbing compulsively under his opened scalp, where the furry skin folded back on itself. He scanned the words that scrolled past, five of them in holographic print. He thought _commit to long-term memory_ until the corresponding icon flashed behind his eyes. “Goddit.”

 

* * *

 

Rocket dragged wet paws over his face, combing his fur into an approximation of smooth. Then he cleared his throat, checked one more time that the stitches were secure and the maintenance plate at the back of his skull wasn’t going to swing loose at the first hint of vigorous activity, and deactivated his lock override.

“You can come in now.”

“Fucking _finally!_ Jus' cause ya like the way I smell, don't mean everyone does, Ra -”

Yondu's voice trailed off.

Ah. Shit.

What must this look like from Blue’s perspective?

Grooming the stray blood splatters from his fur was one thing, but Rocket should've expended a bit of effort on mop-up. So sue him though, he was _excited._ He wanted to do this, wanted to make this link, prove to Yondu that he could be trusted.

This was an extreme measure, some folks might say. But those folks weren't Rocket. When you didn't got that long a lifespan, you learned to live on the edge. Still, he shuffled between Yondu and the screwdriver he’d used to dig under the flaps of his scalp, accessing the plate on the back of his head.

It made little difference. Yondu could always peer over him. But impromptu brain surgery left you lacking in inhibitions – hence why Rocket didn't tinker under his chassis unless absolutely necessary.

This didn't qualify. Not life-and-death, at least – but it might just be make-or-break for their relationship. Or whatever this thing was that he and Yondu toyed with, juggling back and forth like a component fresh from the fusion core.

“What,” said Yondu slowly. He took it in: the mess in the basin, the streaks on Rocket’s jumpsuit, the mirror plucked from its fitting and attached to the door of a clothes locker to give Rocket a 360-degree view. “The hell. Is this.”

Rocket had no answer to hand. Rather than fishing for one, he held up his wrist piece and activated the holotext function.

“Don't say these out loud.”

Yondu squinted at the list. “Rat? Whas goin' on?”

How to explain this? Best start from the beginning.

“At the facility,” Rocket began. He hid his wince as his wagging jaw tugged on the sutures. “We had words _._ For if we got out of hand. Words that would stop us.” He tried to convey as much as he could with his eyes; his scalp stretched tight and the stitches felt liable to burst like the valves on their jump drive if they attempted another 700-portal race. “No matter what I’m doing, say those words in that specific order, an' I drop.”

Yondu remembered how to use his tongue. “A kill switch, you mean,” he croaked. Rocket shook his head.

“Just knocks me out. Hour or thereabouts. Ain’t lethal – had it before.” Back in the lab, first four times he tried to escape. Rocket thought it prudent not to mention that.

Yondu nodded. His expression remained unreadable. “And ya want me to use this on you?”

Rocket shook his head. “Well, obviously I don't _want_ you to use it – I don't want you to _need_ to.” Yondu stayed still, stayed silent. Rocket figured he’d had enough time to memorize the data-doc. He closed the hologram and performed a manual wipe, stripping all records of its existence. His claws only trembled a little.

“I just. Want those words to be there, in case you do.” He tweaked a corner of his mouth up. “Like a bot-hooker, y'know? When you tell me to stop, I stop, but this... This is assurance.”

Yondu nodded again. Rocket's sneer curled all-too-easy.

“Well? You gonna say something or what?”

“Yeah.” Yondu looked at him dead-on. The flatness in his stare made Rocket feel all the more jittery and unsettled in comparison. The back of his head didn’t help – a burn that spread like a taper touched to tissue, as nerves winked back to life and drowned under a surfeit of agony. An internal ache augmented the pain, as Yondu said: “I never asked for this, Rat.”

He stripped his crummy boxers and sleeping shirt in two sharp yanks. He stomped for the shower, taking a last gulp from his portable inhaler. Vaporized medicine bludgeoned his airways open, as he stepped onto the tiles and cranked on the steam.

Rocket averted his eyes. “Yondu,” he said, shuffling after him. The wash room was compartmentalized, the locker area segregated from the showers by a forcefield, which let bodies pass through while keeping out the water vapor. As soon as Rocket crossed that line, the air went from arid to rainforest.

Condensation prickled every follicle. He stood beneath a humidifier; the steam rolled from pipes inset in the walls, their open mouths downturned. It billowed white and thick as the unrigged sails on a neolithic watercraft, one of the catamarans whose fossilized remains could occasionally be dug from a cliff along a Xandarian shore.

Rocket stirred the cloud with his fingertips. “Yondu,” he said softly.

A snort helped him pinpoint his friend amid the steam. Blue, glimpsed in pastel fragments. “Rat,” mimicked Yondu, and once satisfied that the damp air had opened his pores, he heaved the water lever down. Waiting for the automatic rationer to fill the cistern, he grabbed one of the soapstones from the mount on the wall.

It was too high for Rocket to reach. Technically, he didn’t _need_ to – his skin cleaned itself, so long as he licked the grease from his fur every couple of days. Pumice stones didn't so much exfoliate him as they gave gave him a shoddy waxjob.

But it was just another of those things, those unthinking little ways in which he wasn’t included. It rammed petty pins into Rocket’s spleen, filling it like a voodoo doll.

“I done something wrong again, ain’t I.” His ears drooped from more than the humidity. “Was only trying to –“

The drum of water over Yondu’s back beat constant, borderline soporific. “I know.” He faced away, palms braced on the tiles. Given Rocket’s low vantage it would be easy to ogle; steam slid between Yondu's thighs, glossing the blue skin to satin.

Fuck, he had a nice ass. How did a senior citizen manage it? Yondu had little breath to waste on squats.

“I ain’t gonna be like them,” he said, dragging the soapstone over his skin. Rocket watched, mesmerized; the coarse rock raised a flush, blue subsumed by navy spirals. “I ain’t gonna just knock you out whenever I don’t want yer jabber. That ain’t me, Rat. An’ I don’t know why ya ever thought it was –“

“I’m not suggesting you use it as your personal knock out drug! Sheesh. It’s just – y’know. To get you a bit more comfortable, if you really wanna… wanna _nookie_ with me.”

Yondu raised eyebrows at the _nookie._ But sobriety fell over his face once again, when he twisted to look at Rocket over his shoulder – _eyes,_ stars-dammit; look at his _eyes_. “Ya give me all this power, jus’ so as you can get laid?”

Rocket scoffed, dismissing the notion before it left Yondu’s mouth. “Don’t be stupid, Blue. Doesn’t suit you. I wouldn’t go to all this effort just a romp in the sack, yeah? If I wanted that, I’d go to…” He trailed off.

It felt dirty, talking about his jaunts in the Knowhere ghetto, inveigling his way into some bed or another, waking crusty and hollow and far too used for the man who'd done the fucking. There was nothing _pure_ about what he and Yondu did. The galaxy had defiled them a thousand times over; they were too jaded to seek perfection, or any other far-off ideal. However, Rocket refused to taint this conversation with more bad memories.

“I ain’t doing this for the sex,” he said, stepping forwards. He laid his hand on Yondu’s calf, over a scar where someone had, by the looks of it, tried to gouge out his Achilles tendon with a chainsaw. His stitches stung from the steam. They ached constantly, sharp enough to wrinkle his snout, like papercuts in soapy bathwater.

Yondu’s leg muscle, in contrast, was thick and warm. It twitched under Rocket's palm, smooth as he’d fantasized. If he slid his hand up he’d be holding him by the back of the knee: as intimate a gesture as you could manage when you barely topped two feet.

“I’m doing it for _you.”_ Then, in case that was too cliché: “I don’t want you to _let_ me fuck you. You gotta want it too. Otherwise I ain’t no better than them assholes that owned you before.”

Yondu stared straight ahead. He engrossed himself plugging controls into the shower mainframe, thinning the jet so it broke over his prosthetic. But Rocket saw the faint shadow where he sucked his lip into his mouth, and rolled it slow and meditative between chipped gold teeth.

“I want it,” he rasped. The pulse jumped under Rocket's hand. “I want ya, Rat.”

“Good. I. Yeah, that’s good.” Stars, how flustered did he sound? Like a teen about to wet his dick for the first time. No point feigning suaveness though. No point feigning anything. Not with Yondu.

Rocket was just a guy – a toddler-sized guy covered head to toe in fur, whose tail performed an intricate snake dance as if it could charm Yondu closer. He’d been _developing feelings_ for this big blue a-hole since he looked at him across the _Quadrant's_ bridge, warped by jump-lag. And now? Yondu reciprocated.

 _Ain’t nobody like me but me._ How wrong he’d been. He wanted companionship and found it in Groot – and after he died, he assumed that was it. The happy days were over, and he’d never find anyone who understood him, not ever again.

That didn’t stop him from longing for connection. But when you wanted something impossible, you started to deny it out of spite. Rocket had almost been offended by the insinuation that Yondu and him were in any way similar, for all of a second before the enormity of that revelation struck.

He wasn’t alone.

Here was a man – a big, tough man, one-time captain of a Ravager fleet, whose grody teeth didn’t detract from his natural charm. And he admitted, quite openly, that he was like Rocket. A monster. A misfit, a reject, a thing which was, according to the laws of nature, never supposed to be.

Yondu was like him. And he wasn’t ashamed of it. That meant more than anything.

“Thing is,” he said, rubbing his hand in place. He loved the size of Yondu, loved not being able to span his calf between pinky and thumb. But equally, he loved how the massage made Blue’s leg shiver, like Rocket’s when you scratched behind his ears.

“What’chu doin’ down there, Rat?” His drawl wasn’t nearly as steady as intended.

“I don’t wanna fuck you,” Rocket continued. Then, before Yondu could get the wrong idea – “I wanna lay you down, see. I wanna take my time, I wanna have fun, I wanna leave you strung out and squirming and _gasping_ for me to finish you.” He thumbed at the nearby medical set. “So, uh, keep your oxygen mask close to hand.”

Yondu sniggered, busy diverting blood to his cock. Rocket watched it rise. The girth of it made his breath catch. Oh, he’d never be able to take it – not unless he wanted to prolapse from his ass to his esophagus, and that didn’t sound like Rocket’s idea of fun. Ick. Having things inside him was an instant turn off anyway – not since the day he woke with five dissection pins peeling his hide away from his spine.

He imagined snuggling up to Yondu's cock instead, slipping the head between his teeth. Licking hairless balls or snuffling his snout along his crack, so he could feed his tongue, slick and hot, into his pulsing little hole.

“I wanna take you apart,” he said softly. He kneaded the shower-slippery flesh, the give of scar tissue and the hardness of corded muscle beside. “But I ain’t going to enjoy it, not if you’re not. So. Drop codes.”

“I’m not going to use them.”

“Well, yeah. You say stop, I stop. You say wait, I wait. You wanna pick a safeword, just make sure you give me time to log it in my long-term memory archive –“

“I know,” interrupted Yondu before he could get carried away. He plopped the soapstone back on its holder, turning with the languorous confidence of a man at home in his own skin. His cock swayed half-hard, dark as his scrubbed skin, a rich indigo marbled through with veins. “But for now… Well, Rat. Ya got me wet just thinkin’ about what them lil’ paws of yours might do to me. I’m thinkin’ it’s time ya put the units where your mouth is.”

Rocket licked his lips, not disguising his eagerness. “Can I put my mouth where your dick is instead?”

Yondu slid down the wall. He looked seal-soft from his scrubbing and invitingly dishevelled. Once certain he had Rocket’s attention – as if it would be anywhere else, although his vision remained a touch loopy from his earlier brain-rummaging – Yondu spread his meaty thighs and showed Rocket what he’d meant by _wet._

“Turn off the steamer,” he drawled. “An’ fetch me my goddamn mask. If anyone’s outside, they can wait their turn – I think we gonna be here a while.”

 

* * *

 

And what a long while it was.

Vestigial, Yondu informed him, lifting his sac so Rocket could treat it to appropriate scrutiny. Apparently, Centaurian males didn’t just keep their nipples while developing in their papa’s pouch.

He was delightfully shameless. Although it stung to imagine how he’d thickened his skin – long hours spent exposed in slave rings, for potential buyers to prod at and grope – Rocket decided to make the most of it.

“Hold yer legs open,” he said, words breaking over Yondu’s hard-on. He wasn’t fully erect – would probably take some playing to work up to it, what with his advanced years. But his pussy, small and shallow though it was, practically bubbled over. It overflowed, painting his perineum with a snail trail that had nothing to do with residual shower water. “Nice and wide, Blue. That’s it.”

“You need that much space?” Yondu drawled. He sounded sarcastic, but the velvety flush around his crotch was anything but. “If my hip pops out, you get to put it back.”

Rocket thumbed apart the tiny vulva. “You feel anything here?” he asked. If Yondu had a clit it was too small for bean-flicking. Rocket would have to nab a head torch and go for a proper hunt – or else find them somewhere with better lighting.

Like his workshop. He could sit Yondu on his table and pour over him for hours, like he was a particularly intricate mechanism. Push his buttons and crank his motors until the man was a putty-soft mess.

“Can you cum more than once? Can I –“

“Find out? Sure.”

“If it’s too much – “

“I tell ya to quit it.”

“And if I don’t…”

Yondu looked at him hard for a moment. “You could always fix my arrow,” he said eventually. “Then I’d never have to use them words anyway. One whistle – betchu'd stop real quick.”

“Next on my list,” Rocket promised. He moved closer, inhaling hungrily, nose twitching towards the sharp tang of slick.

“Oxygen mask,” was the last thing he said, hearing the peculiar crackle in Yondu's chest. Then, as Yondu fumbled the breathing apparatus into place, he squared his muzzle against his slippery little cunt and started to lick.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you so much for every kudo/comment! I love you all. Y'all give me the energy to edit this monster.**


	12. Chapter 12

As it turned out, the words weren't necessary. Not this time.

Cum clung to his fur. Always had done, always would. Yondu's concoction was worse than most; it had a peculiar spiderweb consistency, and as soon as it came into contact with whiskers, it glued to them. At least Rocket didn't have to fear the cavalier treatment: being booted from a bedsit to rinse off under a faucet that was grotty even by Knowhere's standards.

Knowhere was a lightyear off yet. Plus, Yondu wasn't like that. For the first time in Rocket's memory, someone helped him with clean-up - the same guy who got him messy, no less.

They sat side by side. Their water ration ran dry a while back, but Yondu – smart guy – pushed in the plug so a tepid pool gathered. It chilled buttocks hirsute and otherwise. Every now and then, Yondu had to shift to reintroduce sensation to his legs.

He scooped water over Rocket, drenching him from his stitched up scalp to his tail. His jumpsuit, discarded beyond the steam zone, looked cosy in comparison. But better a little discomfort in the present than a whole cycle spent itching in the future, fielding Mantis's innocent questions about why he smelt.

Carding the strings from Rocket's fur took time, but Yondu demonstrated that, contrary to popular opinion, he could be patient. Patient and thorough, and surprisingly thoughtful too. Rocket didn't need to tell him that he and shampoo weren't friends; Yondu simply sniffed the bottle, raised an enquiring eyebrow, asked 'too stinky?' and replaced it on Gamora's shelf.

Rocket helped too. He licked his paws and rubbed them over what he could reach, then licked them again. He pulled a face at the taste – making Yondu chuckle like the dirty old man he was. Rocket felt justified to a thigh-slap, wobbling the muscle on Yondu’s leg most satisfyingly.

“Laugh it up, Blue.”

Yondu did, with gusto.

He was of a non-stick variety. All it took was a quick spruce between his legs and he was squeaky-clean, smooth as a doll from a bot-catalog (if rather more wrinkly). Rocket refused to admit he was jealous.

“Good?” he found courage to ask, as Yondu began the arduous journey to his feet. He took it steady, bracing himself on the slippery tile and inching up the wall. His breath puffed hot condensation on his mask. But behind it, his grin stretched broad as ever.

“What d'you think?”

Once he stood upright, his balls hid his pussy from sight. It was a velvety secret for the two of them, and Rocket knew that if he sniffed it, he’d find his own saliva infused into the scent of Yondu’s slick.

“I think...” Rocket ran his tongue around the insides of his teeth, licking where tartness lingered. “Think I took you apart, Blue. And you're gonna let me do it again.”

Yondu pulled his mask off far enough to rub the pressure weal on his nose. “Not this cycle you ain’t. Stars-damned heart'll give out.” Then, at Rocket's falling face: “Didn't say never, did I?”

“Yeah, well.” Rocket closed the distance, treating the scarred swell of his calf to a kiss. Stitches tugged at the back of his head. It was worth it though - more than worth it, for this. “Soon you won't have to worry about your heart. Or your lungs.”

“Why? You gonna sell 'em on the black market?” Yondu coughed, demonstrating the rattle. “Don't think they're worth all that much, is all. Don't want'chu getting short-changed.”

Dumbass. Rocket was an amorous ocelot, curling around Yondu's leg in a flow of damp brown fur. “Because,” he murmured, incisors grazing blue, “I'm gonna get you sorted out.”

“Let someone else fix me? Didn't think yer pride'd stand for such a thing.”

“Har-dee-har. I mend ships, not people. You're beyond my, uh, _expertise_.”

“'Cept my fun bits.”

“Yeah, them I can handle.”

“Damn, you cute lil' shit.”

Rocket disliked being scooped up without warning. More than that. _Disliked_ was too soft a word. He would’ve bitten anyone else who dared.

While Yondu might have the emotional resonance of a clay-baked brick, he noticed the tension twisting Rocket tight as an M-ship's brake spring. He pet his ears in the closest he came to an apology.

Rocket let the snarl die. He snuggled into the warm loop of Yondu's arm before Yondu could put him down. “Should you be doing heavy lifting?”

Yondu paused. He loosened his grip, offering the chance for Rocket to writhe to freedom. When he didn't, his big shoulders flattened, and he stroked his ear again, gentler, outlining it from base to peak.

“Yer hardly the biggest, Rat.” The wet tip of Rocket's tail stroked Yondu’s chest as the fans clicked on above them. Yondu toed out the bung, letting their dirty water drain. Diluted cum, grime, grease and shed hair; all of it swept away, gurgling into the ship's entrails where the water could be stripped of impurities and recycled anew. “C'mon now. Pucker up. ”

“Aw.” The sarkiness was automatic, but the curl of that tail betrayed him. “Knew you was a softie at heart.” 

Yondu snorted. “Jus' don't go spreadin' it around. Don't get mushy for anyone, y'know.”

He pulled the mask to one side. One of the straps bit into his forehead, the other his chin. Rocket noted how close he kept it, but it was impossible to be pessimistic when your partner’s breath raked over your fur.

Well, perhaps most folks wouldn’t find that comforting if their partner was Yondu. For Rocket though, those hot sour puffs reminded him that the old goat was still kicking. That both of them were, in spite of everything. They'd survived the universe grinding them under its boot, then stood back up and spat in its face. Not that Rocket _believed_ in all that 'soulmate' malarkey, but he might be swayed, just a little, for Yondu.

“You flatterer, you,” he murmured. Yondu grumbled, shuffling him about in his arms.

“Are you gonna kiss me, or wha -”

Rocket opted to show, rather than tell.

 

* * *

 

They sauntered out side by side. Kraglin slouched against the wall, stripped to the waist with a towel slung over one bony shoulder.

“Took ya long enough,” he grumbled. Then inhaled. Then _grinned,_ and shot Rocket an entirely unnecessary wink. “Think I'll leave it an hour to air.”

Damn him, and damn his Hraxian sense of smell.

“Fuck you,” Rocket muttered.

“Uh, 'fuck the cap’n', actually -”

He scuttled into the bathroom before Yondu could thwap the back of his head. “Idjit,” he said, tugging his shirt away from damp skin. “Need to get my arrow back online. Can't scare nobody into respectin' me like this.”

“And that's a sorry day indeed,” agreed Rocket. “Okay, okay. You've hinted enough – next up; one whistly magic stick.”

“Ain’t no _magic stick…_ ”

“Whatever you say, old man.”

Rocket paused. Was it even his place to ask? Couples didn't spend every hour of every cycle attached by the hip. It'd be kinda difficult anyway, considering the height difference.

But regardless, while they didn't _need_ to languish in each other's presence, Rocket fizzled just from Yondu's smell on his skin. He'd never felt it before: this floaty, heady nirvana that followed sex with someone he cared for, and who cared about him in return. He longed to draw it out, make it last. Coil up in it and roll around until he couldn't remember what it was like to be alone.

“If ya wanna ask me to watch you hammer my _yaka_ into shape,” said Yondu, readjusting his boxers and rolling up his shirt collar before hooking the portable oxygen pack to its clip, “the answer's _shit yeah_. Ain't lettin' you fondle it without supervision.”

“Rude. You let me fondle you.”

“Arrow’s different. Sacred part of Centaurian culture, that. Carved it outta the last _yaka_ mine in existence, back when…”

“Spare the history lesson, Blue. Admit it." Rocket elbowed him in the shin. "You’re coming cause you wanna snuggle.”

Yondu pulled a ridiculous face, but didn't deny it.

 

* * *

 

They closed on Knowhere by the day. And by the day, they learned more about one another.

Puffing on Rocket’s slow-healing stitches made his ears flatten. Touching the scars on Yondu’s ass and hips made him thrash like an angry starfish. The one time Yondu traced the whorls of cybernetics on Rocket's back, he stomped away with tooth marks in his thumb.

The silent treatment didn't last. From that cycle onwards, Blue was sure to use big, sweeping strokes or whole-handed gropes, never concentrating too much on any one spot.

Rocket reciprocated. He made sure to conduct his experiments from the front, approaching where Yondu could see him, smell him, tangle his fingers in his thick greyed fur.

So far, these experiments amounted to how much of Yondu’s cock he could slot in his mouth before the risk of scraping a fang on something delicate outweighed the fun of it, and whether he could get Yondu off just from stirring a wet claw between his cunt lips, dragging back and forth and back again without ever pushing inside. The answers were ‘not much’ and ‘no, but you can sure as hell get him horny and frustrated’. It was a fun learning process all around.

As promised, Rocket fixed the arrow. His self-imposed deadline fell by the wayside however, and by the time their battered shuttle plodded into Nova territories, the weld-line was still due to be sandpapered to smoothness, a whole cycle behind schedule.

Considering the distraction lounging on his workbench, Rocket couldn’t blame himself.

Yondu twisted onto his side, liquid if you ignored the click and cuss. He pillowed his head on his bent arm and flashed a crooked, mottled smile, pointing two fingers at Rocket and curling them in towards his palm.

His breathing tube shone with condensation. He took his mask off less and less – but to be fair, Rocket gave him a rigorous daily workout. While Yondu rarely did the manual labor, it still took its toll.

That being said, the lazy old git probably wouldn't take an active role if he had energy to spare. Or so Rocket muttered five minutes later as he fed his fist into his ass, fur slicked back with lubricant.

Yondu was too busy swearing to care. He perched on the bench with his legs in the air, leaning back with his weight on his palms. By the time tight skin snagged on Rocket's elbow, Yondu's legs, spread and upraised like the arms of a supplicant at prayer, began to twitch. The spasms grew erratic as Rocket wriggled his fingers inside him.

He worked his forearm slowly back out again, steadying Yondu's half-hard navy cock. A second, more generous squirt of lube ameliorated the burn of hair on tender muscle.

Rocket withdrew until he was buried to the wrist, rim locked around the bulge of his thumb. Then he pushed. Deep, thick, hard.

Yondu cussed as Rocket groped about, rubbing spongey tissue until he found what he wanted and gave it a flat-handed rub. Then, Yondu tossed his head back and _clicked._ Watching his face through the steep-sided gorge of his legs, Rocket satisfied himself that those were happy noises, not a death rattle.

“You like that,” he murmured, gathering a handful and _squeezing._ He massaged his prostate, watching Yondu’s dick jump, his balls tighten and his chubby thighs bounce.

This was it. What he wanted, what he needed. The sense of _control_ he got, pellucid and perfect, when he soldered the final wire into place and watched a circuit crackle to life. Yondu's body was a map of pressure points, buttons to push and switches to flick, an equation to solve. Apply the right sequence of touches, combined with stamina and repetition and a spoonful of innovation, and you'd inevitably make him...

Those bounces reached a quivering peak. Yondu choked into the crook of his arm as warmth splattered Rocket's ears, slithering to drip from his chin. He didn’t let the stickiness interrupt him, grinding the gnarly pad of each finger over that sensitive nerve bundle until he coaxed the last milky-thick dribbles free.

“There. Thassit.”

He kissed Yondu’s inner thigh, avoiding the scar. His legs squeezed like they were trying to crush him in place. Seemed Blue wasn’t capable of talking yet. But he didn't push him away, and his body locked down, tugging hungrily on his fist.

Rocket lay off his fondling. His arm rested there, buried to the wrist bone, letting Yondu suffer the stretch. It kept their incompatible bodies tied in a parody of intimacy.

No, not a parody. This was it – the real thing. Just because the dick buzzing against his inseam was the length and breadth of Yondu's pinky, it didn’t lessen this. They were learning each other, tuning towards harmony with every touch, every shared breath, every moan. _Size didn't matter._ Maybe if Rocket had Yondu like this every night for the next year, he'd start to believe it.

Plus, if he hunched his shoulders and strained the steel pins in his vertebrae from their interlocking line, Rocket could press his nose on Yondu’s cunt.

It _quivered._

“Fuck,” Yondu said – gasped, more like. His breath splattered against the back of his oxy-mask, and his cock managed a feeble twitch. Rocket had experimented with his refractory period enough that he didn't expect miracles.

But slick met his muzzle, even if Yondu stayed soft. He pressed his face to the furrow between the neat blue folds and _sniffed_ , drank him in like he was huffing engine fumes.

“Stars, you smell good.”

“W-won’t if we keep fuckin’ surrounded by all yer g-gunky shit an’ I get a y-y-yeast –“

Rocket pulled back, snorting to get the juice from his nostrils. “What?”

“Yeast infection, fuck…”

Rocket smirked. “Shaddup Blue,” he said, and answered the shaky flipped bird with his spare hand. He nuzzled in close, nose circling on Yondu's balls. Yondu’s ass flexed around his wrist. it dragged him another inch in, and then another, insatiable, taking more with every undulation of Yondu’s hips, blue toes hooked like talons where his feet clawed the air.

This time, when he heard clicks, Rocket _purred_. Restarting his slow shunt, he rolled his tongue against his vulva before easing it slickly in.

“Shit-fuck! Wait, wait –“

Rocket froze. He extracted himself – mouth only for now. Ripping the arm out would end poorly for both of them. “What?”

“You… you…”

“Shit. Whaddid I do?” Rocket compulsively checked for blood, licking around his teeth. Had he nicked him? Yondu shook his head.

“You…” he wheezed, coughing the words through his mask. “What’chu gettin’ outta this, Rat?”

Rocket frowned. He combed the mess from his whiskers with his spare paw. Yondu’s body made for a constant distraction: a heaving landscape of scars, leaking sweat and slick in a pungent brew. He forced himself to concentrate. This felt like one of those questions you were supposed to answer.

“I get to watch you melt,” he said, wiggling his fist to check if Yondu had loosened. No dice – he clung tight as ever, bearing down on him in a hot silk tourniquet. “I get to hear you click.”

“Y’know I’m cussin’ at’chu, right?” 

“Counting on it."

“Look, I just wanna know…” A hand cupped Rocket’s lopsided grin, winding through coarse and cum-splattered fur. Yondu crunched, looking over the loose skin flap on his stomach that Rocket had yet to work up the courage to touch. “I wanna know yer havin’ fun.”

Rocket’s dick leaked over the inside of his fly. At those words his hips humped of their own accord, a vicious instinctual plunge. He had to grip Yondu’s thigh to steady himself.

“Does it _look_ like I’m having fun?”

Yondu’s thumb swept under his eye. The tenderness of the gesture almost had Rocket thrusting again. “Ya could be having more.” He wet his navy lips until they shone glossy as the cunt twitching temptingly close to Rocket’s nose, the limp cockhead above. “Seem t’remember offerin’ for ya to fuck me, is all.”

Rocket demonstratively crooked his arm. Yondu’s eyes rolled back, muscles stiffening under the rolled meat at his waist. “What d’you think we’re doing?”

“Aw… aw hell… Rat…”

“C’mon, Blue. Tell me what you want.”

“I wanna… I wanna…”

“Yeah?”

Yondu sucked down air. If he swallowed much more, he'd give himself hiccups - but hey, they might make him clench up tight enough for Rocket to feel. The bench creaked beneath him as he rearranged, scooting flat and disgorging three furry inches of arm from his ass in the process.

“Geddup here and get inside me,” he hissed. Rocket, dick extended so far it stung, only just remembered to ease out his fist before obeying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Shameless porn chapter to cheer me up after a long hard day. Comments = my eternal love.**


	13. Chapter 13

“You do realize,” he said, rolling against him again and again, “I ain't the largest guy around?”

Yondu snickered. They sat facing each other, Rocket between his legs. He pressed in close – almost like he didn’t want Yondu to see, didn’t want him to know. But Yondu, as always, knew when to push. He pried Rocket off, stilling his humping with embarrassing ease. Being grabbed was never Rocket's favorite pastime: he jolted, tail snapping out straight and teeth bared, turning his growl sensual at the last possible moment.

Just Yondu. Yondu wouldn't hurt him. 

Luckily, Yondu was also mighty unobservant. Right now his eyes were on Rocket's dick, not his steamrolled ears or the electrocuted puff of his tail.

“Lookit that,” he drawled, smooth as syrup. “Pretty lil’ slip, all pink an' shiny. Cute as the rest of ya, that is.” Where Rocket had no confidence, he could always feign it. He pushed into the scrutiny, guiding Yondu to frame his cock: a short hooked rod, slimmer than any of Yondu's fingers.

“Matches your eyes,” he gasped, as Yondu carefully – oh so fucking carefully – ran his thumb up and down, testing the ridge of internal bone, the soft fold of the sheath.

“Mmm. You ain't cummin' in them though.” Leaning back, he tucked under his balls, hooking the wrinkled sac to one side. Rocket glimpsed slick: a bright little shimmer, plush lips tipped in stardust. Groaning loud and earnest, he clutched Yondu's waist, claws tucked against his palm so as not to scratch.

“In here, boy. C'mon, hurry up now, don'tchu keep me waitin'...”

He didn't even scold him for the 'boy'. Just pressed forwards, tail shivering as he moved his hips, found the angle, found the  _give..._

And then it was a loose slide, into Yondu as far as he could go. Rocket heard himself gasp, as if from a distance. If he arched his chest, he could cradle Yondu's spent cock against his body, pressing desperate, fervant kisses to his abdomen as he rubbed the sealed point of their bodies together, slick joining the cum on his fur.

Yondu balled his fists when Rocket nibbled his pouch. His teeth were landmines, their danger a constant prickle on the back of his mind. One bite, one nip, and he'd taste sanguine. But the wet clutch of Yondu’s pussy dimmed the fear he was going to cut him, dimmed everything but the fragrance of sex and breath and that pure, instinctual spark of  _yes,_  roaring through Rocket in a whirlwind.

Yondu's cunt might sit snugger than any of the others Rocket had taken for a joyride, but there was still a significant size difference to contend with. Yondu opened when horny, flesh like damp satin sheets, wanting more than Rocket could give. Lucky all of Yondu's bits were jostling for space, else he wouldn't feel this at all.

In lieu of a clit, Rocket jabbed his dick as hard as he could against the top wall of his cunt. He activated the buzz function hard enough to make his teeth vibrate.

Yondu spasmed. He arched back – and fuck, if this wasn't the perfect view; peering up across the rounded hillock of his stomach and his chest beyond it, to where his head tipped for the solars, mouth gaping around a hedonistic moan, so long and rasping that Rocket thought it would crackle away to nothing or burst his damaged lungs.

He ground in place. It took a small battle to quell the thrust from his hips, that instinctual drive to hump as hard and fast as possible. He wasn't sure if he was long enough to catch that sweet spot inside – wasn't even sure Yondu had one. But Yondu’s reaction to the buzz-bone captivated him like watching a faraway supernova.

His chest heaved. He gulped breath after breath, scrabbling at the bench so he wouldn't slump backwards. His abdomen flexed as he ground himself onto the vibe, the pair of them finding a rhythm, undulating as one wave...

Yondu's jaw popped, what with how hard he was tensing it. Rocket elbowed away the hands – shaking almost as much as Yondu's thighs – which tried to press him closer, hold him in place. He didn't want to be moved, didn't want to be used as a toy.

Yondu seemed to understand. He gripped his own temples instead, writhing sideways on the bench. Prosthetic met metal with a resounding crash.

Rocket winced. He didn't want the blow to addle Yondu's brains before his dick got the chance.

“Rat,” he gurgled. Dazed, or just on edge? Rocket soon had his answer. He pumped back and forth, tail threshing the air behind him, cock rubbing Yondu's silky walls. Yondu's voice crept for the high end of his register: “Rat, Rat, Rat...”

Rocket craned to lick the very lip of his pouch. “Careful, Blue,” he breathed, over skin pale from having never seen any of the galaxy's billion suns. He pressed his thumb there, digging the nail under just enough for the promise of it to make Yondu keen. “Don't give yourself no seizure now. That'd be embarrassing for both of us.”

His voice shook, but Yondu didn't notice. He was in constant motion; scraping through his stubble, clawing at the bench, toes flexing and feet curling on themselves, legs shuddering with the effort it took not to crush Rocket between them. Rocket worked the flat of his tongue under the pouch, pinching the shape of a nipple through the skin. He was rewarded with a rattle of prosthetic on metal, a quiver of juicy pussy, and a dribble from Yondu's limp dick _._

For a second, he forgot his chips. He forgot the blueprints in his brain, the still-smarting sting in his scalp, everything. Everything except Yondu's smell, Yondu's taste, Yondu's blue-blue _-blue._

He held himself deep when he came – as deep as he could get. Yondu's cunt flexed even looser than before, but Rocket kinda liked it. Here it was, inscribed in the rich melt of Yondu’s body: the proof that he'd done well. Like that moment when he clicked the final puzzle piece into place and heard his Jump Drive hum.

His cum seeped out, water-thin. Threads of it bonded to Yondu's slick, a sex-stinking milk that stained the fur around Rocket's crotch. He wished he could stay there forever, high on the fumes of their mingling scent, but his cock resheathed itself when spent, and he was left pressing his messy groin fur to Yondu's smooth balls.

Yondu took a long time to catch his breath. Go figure. He rocked with coughs or chuckles, and when Rocket extracted himself and crawled up his body to check, he found it was the latter.

“What?” he asked, socking him – lightly – on the mask. “You laughing at me? Sure weren't five minutes ago. I ain't see you concuss yourself like that before during; s'kinda hot.”

He considered making the words scathing, like he was genuinely offended, but didn't. Couldn't feign hurt if he wanted to. He soared on a cloud, floating through the nebula, cooing at all the baby stars. And Yondu collapsed under him, a sprawled heap, sniggering through his oxygen mask while Rocket hummed  _Wild Horses_ under his breath.

“That one's really yer favorite, ain't it,” he said. He peeled the mask off and accepted the kiss Rocket dropped on him with gusto, damn near sucking off his snout.

Rocket smiled, and kept humming. He rubbed their noses together, uncaring for the goo in his fur. Wild, wild horses couldn't drag him away. For now at least, grooming could wait.

Lines did need to be drawn though – Rocket's being the next day, when Yondu passed out mid-fucking. As soon as he noticed he slipped free, heart thudding like a rail gun, expecting Yondu to wake up, freak out, murder him, freak out some more, murder everyone else on board, and so forth.

By the time he coughed himself awake, Rocket had banished his erection through willpower. Willpower and a lot of Halfworld memories. He crouched in the corner of his cabin, occupying himself with the sander, grating Yondu's arrow back and forth over the whirling stone. The sparks helped, somewhat. Gave him something to focus on - ephemeral little glints, fragments of the stars, dying as fast as they glowed.

“Hey Blue,” he said by way of greeting. Yondu sat, groaning. He felt his head – then between his legs.

“Huh,” was his only comment. But the sexathon toned down significantly, after that.

 

* * *

 

 

Rocket fixed Yondu's arrow before they alighted on Knowhere. For all his nagging, Yondu didn't have the puff to whistle for more than a few seconds at a time, and when he tried while wearing the oxygen mask, the pitch distorted too much to register. He took that as well as Rocket predicted.

“C'mon,” said Rocket. “You got this, Blue.” They gathered in the medbay, figuring no more damage could be done than had already been incurred between one exchange of blaster fire and Rocket's decimation of their scanning machine. The memories of what happened on that bed made Rocket itch, a scrabble beneath his skin like the irritation around a fresh implant. But Yondu wouldn't have suggested this if he didn't want to push himself. Rocket refused to insult him with the offer of comfort.

And so, he and Kraglin watched Yondu practice. Or rather, they watched him become increasingly frustrated, as whistle after whistle trailed into stuttering coughs and the arrow span harmlessly to one side.

“We can do this later.” Rocket stretched the rubber ligaments behind his knees, which tended to stiffen if he sat cross-legged too long. His tail wound around him in a furry stole. “We've docked – let's get you to a stars-damned doctor so I don't have to hear you coughing out your lungs...”

On cue, a fit assailed Yondu that left him hunched and wheezing. His arrow, mid-flight, veered sharply to the left. It was only Kraglin's reflexes that prevented him from losing an inch off his Mohawk.

“Rat's got a point,” he said. Rocket nodded at him.

“ _Thank_ you. Now get your ass up, old man. We're going to find a hospital.”

Yondu's fists knotted tight where they braced against his knees. “I... hate... hospitals,” he managed, air stuttering up and down his windpipe like he was halfway through an asthma attack.

Peter chose that moment to enter. He blinked at the scene, alarmed by the faint scent of burnt hair, the drizzle of smoke from the top of Kraglin's head – scorched, that was all – and the arrow lying forlorn and impotent, off to one side. “You forgotten how to aim?”

Yondu was coughing too hard to swear at him. Rocket helped him fit the mask. He didn't glare at the others to stop them cracking a joke – for once, they were all on the same wavelength. This wasn't something to be mocked. Especially not when Yondu raised his head, indigo-cheeked and glaze-eyed, and showed them the dark blue drip on his underlip.

Peter gulped. “Yeah. Hospital. Your choice, old man – you walk or we carry.”

Yondu's hoarse laugh hurt to listen to. Rocket was captivated by the bloody gloss. He couldn't look away, even as Yondu eased up the wall he'd been leaning on, rejecting Peter's outstretched hand with a sneer and a trembly smack. “Learnt yer bargainin' from the best. Awright, awright. All of you out – need to put on some proper pants.”

Kraglin frowned. “You want us out so you can put pants  _on?_  You've been wanderin' around in yer underoos an' a shirt for weeks, sir.”

“Yeah, well. If I've got anythin' left of a reputation, I wanna hang onto it. Where the hell did I even put 'em...?”

“Here,” said Rocket quietly. He hastened to the airing cupboard. It was over the laundry pod, too high for him to reach – but if he unhinged the laundry pod door, he could stand on that and stretch, and...

Peter easily reached over his head. “Here, lil' buddy,” he said, depositing the bundle of leather in his arms, creased neater and crisper than they'd ever been in Yondu's cabin's floordrobe. Rocket bared his teeth at him in what was very almost a smile.

“Thanks.”

He didn't notice the edge to the word. Yondu did. Rocket wondered if he'd defused brewing disputes like this among his Ravagers, or if it was just a natural gift – a surprising one; if Yondu was a born mediator, he hid it well. But either way, he dismissed Kraglin and Peter with a curt “See ya dockside, kiddos,” and held out his hand for the pants.

“Y'know,” said Rocket, after they'd filed out the door, Kraglin's parting shot of 'mop up afterwards' being deflected by Peter's smack to the back of his head. “As soon as we step out there, word's gonna spread. People are going to know what happened. Maybe even old friends of yours.”

Yondu engrossed himself in slotting the right leg in the right hole. “Stakar and co., y'mean?”

“Gossip travels faster than fire in a hydrogen tank.”

“Yer right about that.”

Rocket gathered his words, combing claws through his whiskers.

“We spoke a while back, while you were unconscious. About maybe getting Stakar to help us.”

Yondu looked at him out the corner of his eye. “You know what I did to them children?”

Rocket's throat felt too thick to swallow. He nodded, cogs in his neck grinding.

“And y'know what happened to his?”

His gulp sandpapered the inside of his throat. He nodded again.

“Well then.” Yondu turned to fasten the zipper, and Rocket missed all that lovely blue flesh as soon as the leather clothed it. But still, he supposed, half the joy of a present was in the unwrapping. “You'll know from that that Stakar ain't never gonna forgive me. No matter if I'd died in the black. No fireworks over my grave, that's what he promised – and the old bastard's too stubborn to go back on it.”

“Like someone else I know.” Rocket scampered to the arrow when he saw Yondu glancing at it, to save him having to stoop. He held it out, and slid his hand along the shaft so that when Yondu reached down their fingers grazed. “I'm gonna get you fixed. You can be as stubborn as you like, but I'm gonna help you, Blue.”

“And if ya can't fix me yerself, you'll fix the ship and get me to someone who can?” Yondu considered the arrow. Lacking a harness, he tucked it through his belt loop instead, snagging it on a hook in the fletching that was seemingly designed for that purpose. “Rat, I ain't yer responsibility.” He wiped the blood on the back of his palm, scowling at it as if that telling blue-black stain had done him personal injustice. “If this ain't fixable... Well, y'ain't allowed to blame yerself, is all.”

“You don't tell me what to do,” Rocket joked. Neither of them saw the humor in it, but there were few smiles to be had when your partner started coughing up blood, so they made the most of it.

“Shall we?” Yondu gestured for the door. Rocket walked around him, ensuring his oxygen pack was secured and all the valves were functioning at optimal capacity, before he nodded his affirmative and cupped one small paw over the back of Yondu's knee.

“After you, Blue.”

“We all know ya just wanna look at my ass.”

“Just wanna make sure you don't collapse, old man. I've seen enough of that wrinkly blue moon to last me a lifetime.”

Yondu smirked at him, but did as he was told. It was all the more thrilling, because Rocket knew that had he been anyone else, Yondu would've been contrary for the hell of it.

He'd wiped the blood away. But the memory of it, coating Yondu's tongue, glimmering on the tip of a filed gold fang, wouldn't leave Rocket alone. He meant what he'd said. If he didn't like what the first quack had to say, he'd find a second opinion – and a third and a fourth and a fifth, at gunpoint if necessary, until they convinced him there was something left in Yondu's chest to save.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you so much to all my commenters! I hope you enjoyed the smut. The boys are finally doing something about Yondu's lungs........ We'll see how that goes. 8I**


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm sorry...**

_You ain't allowed to blame yourself._

Well, it was a bit late for that. If Rocket had activated the tractor beam a split second sooner... If he'd only brought a spare vacsuit…

Gamora volunteered to Groot-sit. Wise girl. Kid didn't need to hear this verdict – the same one repeated by the last three ad-hoc surgeons they visited, which would doubtlessly be repeated by the next three too.

She swallowed. The translucent tubes in her throat flexed against Rocket's rifle. “I-I'm sorry, Mister -”

“Rocket.”

“Mister Rocket. But there's truly nothing I can do.”

“Alright.” Rocket got off her chest, which was, like that of any self-respecting mod-surgeon, augmented with various metallic oddities, breathing apparatuses chief among them. If she had nothing for them, whispered the sinking voice inside him, none of them would. But Rocket couldn't – wouldn't – give up. “Who’s next?”

Places like this made his skin crawl. But at least he could puff out his fur when he got antsy; make himself bigger than he was. Yondu just shrank. It didn't suit him.

“Rat,” he croaked. He sat on the edge of the table – it had been given a thorough swabbing beforehand, at Rocket's insistence. He fingered the tip of his arrow like he was fidgeting with one of his dashboard toys, pricking it on index, middle, ring, pinky and back again. “C'mon now. Enough of this. We both know -”

“We both know _shit,_ ” said Rocket. He sounded desperate, even to his own ears. “Kraglin, Quill...”

“Rocket,” said Kraglin. He looked up from where he'd been glowering at his boots while the doctor gave her ruling. His mouth tensed so tight it was practically invisible: a raw red wound that cracked open around his words. “This is the third place we've tried. There ain't no more on this level – we'd have to head on up to the eye socket...”

“So we go there! If it gets Blue help -”

“If it gets you what'chu wanna hear." Yondu heaved himself off the gurney. Although Rocket never grasped the point of the phrase 'finding one's feet' (they were rarely attached anywhere but the end of the leg, even on Halfworld) watching Yondu fight for his balance made him understand it more than he ever wanted to.

Yondu braced his hand on the pallet for far too long. The other kneaded his chest as it convulsed around another bloody cough, harsh enough to freeze the rest of them in place. Even Peter jerked, earphones wedged in as far as they could go.

Flarking child. Always running from his problems. Mothers, fathers, the deaths thereof. Rocket envied him that ability: to shove his head in the sand and convince himself everything was groovy. But even the purr of _Wild Horses_ couldn't dull his determination.

“I'm trying to _help_ you, dammit. C'mon Blue.”

“Naw. I've had enough of this.” Yondu grabbed his shirt and coat, rolling the former over his belly and the latter up his arms. He looked fine – beaten and battered, weathered by years of abuse and servitude and piracy; but no worse despite all his wear. However, they all saw the scans – although Peter kept his eyes shut for the majority. They knew what lay beneath the surface. It wasn't pretty. “I'm goin' back to ship. Y'all can come or otherwise.”

“Fine! Y'know what, fine!” Rocket snatched the scans, which the doctor had been kind enough (under duress of a plasma bolt) to download onto a datapad. “I'll go to the eyesocket myself. Shouldn't be walking around anyway, in your condition.” 

 _Your very terminal, 0% chance of recovery condition._ Some things were best left unsaid.

Yondu groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Rat...”

“I'll trawl through every damn quack shop on this rock. I'll do it _twice._ You know I will.”

“The answer's gonna be the same wherever you go." The doctor's gears creaked as she raised her arms above her head, charge building in Rocket's rifle with an audible whine. “We can only prolong, not cure...”

“Shut up!”

“Rat...”

“You shut up too! If you wanna sit around and die, do it. Just don't expect me to watch you!” 

With a last sneer at Yondu, Rocket left. He bounded over the operating table and away, scattering mod-equipment in a geyser of rubber and dirty metal: false eyes and gelatinous muscle-implants, coils of corrugated tubing and a set of interlocking titanium bone segments that made his brain ache from the whirr of memory chips. His feet stabbed the ground, all four of them. With gun latched to back and pad magnetized to his belt, he sprinted into the heaving morass of marketgoers without looking back.

He heard Yondu shout something – whipped away by the wind. He scampered on. His canines grated, tail fur spiked and static crackling in the nerve relays that fed commands through his artificial spine.

Those dastardly tears were back. Just the fumes from the miners' slop-carts, that was all. Just the fumes stinging his eyes.

 

* * *

 

He returned an hour later, bedraggled and exuding the rich stink of manure. Yondu, reclining on his workbench, cracked an eye. Lazy clouds foamed across the mask, at odds with the situation. No blood though, Rocket noted. Not just yet. He didn't dare let himself fixate on that, in case that turned to hope.

“The hell happened to you?”

Rocket sniffed. “Junkpile. Took a corner too fast, and -”

“Plop,” Yondu filled in for him. He picked dirt from under his talons, flicking the grime to pepper the water rationer next on Rocket's repair-list. The menace. “You hitting the showers?”

“Next stop.”

“Want company?”

“Not this time, Blue.”

Yondu swung to sit – a laborious process that required far more wheezing than Rocket was comfortable with. Though he kept his expression flat, a testing gleam shone in his eyes. “So, Rat. Ya want me in your cabin tonight or what?”

Rocket wasn't cruel enough to suggest he return to the medbay. “Yeah,” he said. He motioned to the water filter: neglected, geriatric and empty as they were. “I got some crap to finish off. Don’t wait up.”

Yondu snorted. “You know Quill assigned me a cabin too? My old digs got blown up, and no one thought I'd be in the medbay forever. Guess I ain't gonna have much cause to use it.” His laugh carried about as much humor as the average Vogon joke. The phrase 'terminal lung damage' hung between them, thick as smoke and about as breathable. Absurdly, Rocket found himself wishing that an overhead pipe would crack and engine exhaust would swarm around the hangar to choke him too, so Yondu wouldn't face this alone.

Inside though, he was still reeling. He never thought that if he fell in love with someone, they would love him back. And he certainly never considered – never even _contemplated the possibility,_ what with his expiration date and all – that he'd outlive them. Not with Groot. Not now either.

He couldn’t go through this again.

“Take my room,” he muttered. “Water filter can wait. I'll be up soon as I got this crud out my fur.”

Yondu nodded. He lumbered for the door, graceful as a drunk Orloni, and Rocket knew from the way his shoulders shook that he was suppressing the cough, hiding it until the lock sealed so that Rocket wouldn't hear. He kept his chin up – though his lungs must be screaming in his chest, an inhaled thistle lodged in his throat that had started to sprout.

Damn impressive that. Blue was strong as ever, right up until the end. It was in his nature.

Rocket on the other hand? Rocket was _weak._

How could he push Yondu away from him? Lessen the inevitable pain, when the time came for them to unplug his oxy-filters, and he had to listen to the man he loved beg him for death?

Rocket listened for the suck of the pressure seal. Heightened sensors in his paws tracked Yondu's retreating footsteps, even after he left earshot. Rocket waited, fists clenched, until he could methodically ram them through the filter, again and again, a salvo of steel knuckle-pins and rage: rage at the unfairness of it all, at the universe that gave him more than he dreamed possible then dashed it beyond repair.

Fuck it. Fuck it all. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.

But Death dispensed her kiss with arbitrary sadism. Groot had been the first person to know him, to treat him as a man rather than a thing, and he died in the burst of a wooden bubble over Xandar's war-scorced plain. Yondu didn't replace him – no more than Baby Groot ever could. But he'd still been a godsend. A double impossibility, a paradox upon a paradox.

He saw Rocket as a man, and loved him as one too. The thought of it made Rocket weak at his cybernetic knee joints; the thought of being without him encased him tail to chest in ice.

Forcing a wedge between them wouldn't help. He knew it, with the instinctive absolution with which he knew he'd land on his feet if dropped from the right height. It would be selfish and cruel, and it'd only make him hate himself more in the long run, once all this was over and Yondu was gone.

But Rocket was selfish. Rocket was cruel. And, he thought to himself, extracting his arm from the filter to stare at the blank cold hole, he already hated himself so much, what did a little more matter?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not everything I write is a fix-it! :O Leave me your sad screams below plz x**


	15. Chapter 15

“I don't believe you,” said Drax the next morning. Rocket, prying himself stiffly off his workbench, rubbed his eyes, yawned, lifted his tail to fart, and finally processed the words.

“Was that a metaphor? Almost-a-metaphor? Obviously you _believe_ in me, numbnuts. I'm right in front of you.”

Drax drew himself up, chest inflating like there he housed a pair of bellows under each pectoral. “It is, as Gamora likes to call it, 'a turn of phrase'.”

Rocket blinked at him for a long minute, then snarled and set to grooming his whiskers. He sponged himself off in a haze last night, hands working on automatic while his mind processed the events that preceded his trip into the garbage pile. But he'd missed a few spots. While he got a perverse animalistic glee out of rummaging through trash, when he could smell it on himself it wasn't nearly so appealing. “What, you wanna gold star?”

Drax's big face creased. “Regardless of color, even a white dwarf star would be far too hot for the average man to handle...”

Rocket sighed. “Drax. Go away.”

“No! I have come here to tell you something important!”

Rocket waited. “And?” he prompted, after Drax let the pause linger to a length that implied he didn't intend to continue. “What's this important thing of yours?”

A large grey finger levelled at his nose. Rocket resisted the temptation to bite it. “That you, my friend, are being an ignoramus. You and Udonta are 'together', correct?”

Rocket grimaced. “Define 'together'.”

“Well, it usually implies a romantic connection, often accompanied by coitus. I have heard the two of you copulating, and it sounded most vigorous. I am impressed by your stamina, especially as I understand you are of an advanced age for your species.”

Rocket's jaw dropped too far for him to tell Drax to shut his mouth. He corrected that, tongue sticking drily to his tonsils. “I was being sarcastic.”

“No, you used an imperative...” For once, Drax put his modicum of personable skills to use. He read Rocket's temperament from his drooping ears and the low wilt of his tail. “I think,” he said carefully, standing in a bunch of powerful thighs, “that I should go.”

“First smart thing you've said all day.”

“And I think that you ought to visit your lover.” He ignored Rocket's cringe. “You have limited time together. Do not squander it. Some people never know when their loved ones might be wrenched away. Had I a time limit such as this, I would've ensured my wife and daughter's last days were the happiest they ever spent.”

Rocket cleared his throat. “Good thing I ain't you then, isn't it.”

It didn't have the desired effect of making Drax put his fist through a wall – or better yet, Rocket's head. But at the very least, his mouth formed a sour line and he strode for the exit without further squabbling. “Heed my words, Rocket,” he said over one scarrified shoulder. “If you do nothing, you will regret this for the rest of your short and miserable life.”

Rocket waited until the door closed before letting himself dissolve into a puddle of smelly fur. Regret it for the rest of his life, huh? Good thing there were only five years of it left.

 

* * *

 

 

The problem with avoiding someone was that in order for it to be effective, it had to be a mutual effort. The _Quadrant_ didn't have nearly enough hidey-holes, not even for a rodent – most of the vents were only large enough for Groots, and baby ones at that. The little guy himself was perched in his favorite spot on Yondu's shoulder, holding onto the pierced lobe with one hand and waving the other with an enthusiasm that made Rocket feel all the more drained in comparison.

He wiggled his fingers, ignoring Groot's blue stepladder as best he could. “Hi, Twig.”

He could've kicked himself. As soon as that nickname left his mouth, both Groot and Yondu's faces split into broad grins. They would be identical, were it not for the respective quantities of wood and gold fillings. Rocket scowled and looked away.

They docked in the mouth, a port carved into the Celestial's tongue. The muscle itself had long since ossified, turned to a porous stone. It was pitted with holes, ranging from the size of a fiberoptic to ones larger than a fist. They hummed whenever foul air gushed through the chutes, expelling gases and heat from where the miners toiled in the spinal fluid production unit, skimming scum from the vats and milking the glands in the Celestial's sawn-off neck. Rocket heard them now: a mellifluous tone out of place among the clashes of cargo crates and the creaks and grinds of unoiled packing cranes, which leaned at variously jaunty and precarious angles around the edges of the dock.

“Ya didn't come to bed last night,” Yondu said. Straight for the kill. That was so very like him – if he couldn't aim his arrow, he aimed his words instead. The oxygen mask squashed its usual pressure-welt into his cheeks. The ring looked ridiculous whenever he removed it, like someone had drawn a line in blue sharpie around his mouth. Rocket wished that was the only reason Yondu so rarely took it off.

“You're an observant one,” he growled. He gathered his tools, sweeping them into a greasy rag which could be bundled up and thrown over one shoulder like a hobo's carry-sack. Then and only then, did he fasten his glower on Yondu. “If you're waiting for an apology, you'll be here a long time.”

Yondu took it in: the bag, the scowl, the pervasive pong of garbage. Rocket hadn't had time to hit the showers and give himself a more thorough scrub. And although he _knew_ he was going to regret this, _knew_ it didn't fix shit, he couldn't help himself.

First Groot. Now Yondu. He always, _always_ thought that he would die first.

Being wrong once nearly broke him. Twice would finish the job.

“You goin' somewhere?” asked Yondu casually, propping his shoulder against the doorframe. Too casually. Rocket saw the strain in his eyes for all of a second before the walls came up, drawbridge closing, shutting Yondu safe in a castle keep. Nice to know he wasn't the only one putting up barriers. Yondu'd been naked before him plenty of times, but even if he sent Groot to find Peter and stripped off his shirt and pants there and then, no amount of bared blue could make him vulnerable. The portcullis had dropped: no emotion in and none out either. “Sightseein' trip?”

Rocket hefted the bag a little higher. “You goddit, Blue.” Neither of them mentioned how his voice cracked over that name.

Yondu didn't try to stop him, as he strode for the corridor. But he didn't move either. Rocket had to sidestep around him, his bag of tools thumping Yondu's calf. “Were ya gonna say goodbye?”

Rocket was an aficionado in the art of hiding wounds. He knew swallowed hurt when he saw it. “Yeah. Course.”

Yondu's sigh shook out of him like he didn't want to let it go. “You takin' the kid?” he asked, one hand cupping Groot, who followed the conversation with a developing frown. If Rocket left this too long, he'd suss what was going on and embark on an all-out tantrum. Maybe it'd make for a good distraction; let him sneak away without fuss.

“Nah,” he said, although his mind choked up at the terror of it. For the first time since the labs, he would be completely and utterly alone. “He's better off here. Stability, y'know.”

Steps, behind him. Yondu's walking pace was languorous, but Rocket trotted on two feet rather than four, so it wasn't too hard for him to keep pace. “Ya sayin' _you_ don't need stability?”

Rocket shook his head. “Don't even try Blue,” he said softly. “Don't even try.”

 

* * *

 

 

Oddly, Mantis and Peter were the hardest to console. Yondu retreated into himself, like he'd already been burned on the pyre and all that was left was hard cold clinker. He sat silent in the principal pilot's seat, gazing out at the stars.

The view wasn't all that. Knowhere's mouth was overcast, murky with pollution and the gaseous overspill from mining operations far below. It was like sitting inside a stormcloud. The smog encased their craft in a bleary fist, slapping greasy fingers over their windscreen and filching the brilliance of the nebula until all that was left was pastel and grey. But Rocket supposed right now, Yondu would rather take in that view in all its grimy squalor than look at him.

He got it. He was leaving. That made him the asshole in this situation – as Peter had been telling him, repeatedly and with a variety of different phrasing, ever since Rocket interrupted their breakfast.

“God, you – you scrotum of an A'askavarian! I can't believe you'd do this to us!”

Rocket fought the urge to yawn.

It would've been easier to creep out undetected, gone from their lives like any other verminous critter that jumped ship as soon as they made port. But, try as he might, Rocket couldn't help but forge connections. He  _liked_ these people, for all their foibles, all their flaws and failings and other assorted fifflefaffle. Their time together, fraught as it was with galaxy-saving and danger and almost getting themselves dead every other week for a miserly scrap of profit, had been the best of his life.

And so he struggled to look penitent, as Gamora looked down her nose at him, saying nothing but sieving her disappointment through her eyes. He accepted the pat from Drax (and the sorrow in his stare, like he was watching his own mistakes play out in front of his eyes, powerless to stop them. Somehow, that hurt worse than Gamora's quiet fury.)

He even let Mantis get down on her knees and gather him in a snivelling hug. He drew the line at letting her blow her nose on him – although his heart got all squishy when she drew back, lips trembling, eyes huge in her pointy bald face. Damn ticker felt like it was about to liquefy and drip through his ribcage to join the dumbbell, which took up residency in his guts the moment he realized it was over and Yondu was going to die.

Next came Groot.

“Hi little guy,” he said. He tried for a smile, but Groot refused to emulate. It soon fell again. “Little guy?”

“I am Groot.”  
Rocket rubbed the back of his neck. He kept the bag on his shoulder, as if setting it down would crumple his resolve. He was built to haul bomb-defusing equipment halfway around a moon, but the strain burrowed into his bones regardless. “I deserve that.”

“I am Groot.”

“And that.”

“I am Groot.”

Rocket winced. “A little harsh.”

“Aw no,” said Yondu, still glowering through the glass. “Ya deserve that one too.”

He had his captain's coat on. With heavy shoulder guards bulking him out and arrow in a newly-fashioned holster, he looked good as new – with the exception of the oxygen tube looping his throat, coiled like a sated constrictor.

Rocket couldn't begrudge him for the poison in his tone. He opened Yondu up, pried away his defences and showed him how delicious vulnerability could be. And now, when Yondu needed him most, he left.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.” The silent circle of bald and barky faces agreed with him.

“You're an idjit,” Kraglin said, somewhat unnecessarily. But it was like a stopper had been levered from a shaken bottle, and suddenly accusations spurted from every corner -

“How could you just walk away? From us, from _him?_ ”

“Shaddup Quill, I don't need you to fight my battles...”

“You're just like my sister! Too afraid to confront your feelings -”

“Truly, Rocket. You are making a very poor choice.”

“I am worried for you, Rocket. We all are! I don't even need to touch you to feel it -”

“ _I thought you were our friend._ ”

Rocket let the indictments flood past him, sailing over his head. They might've affected a bigger person, a better person. But Rocket was as sparse in soul as he was in stature – he only had enough space inside him for self-directed vitriol. Theirs didn't leave a mark.

“See ya around,” he said. He tapped two fingers off his browbone in a lazy salute, and sauntered for the door.

“Seashell,” said Yondu.

Rocket froze.

“What're you talking about?” asked Peter, head swivelling between the pair of them. Yondu faced the glass, but in their reflection, his glare affixed to Rocket's retreating back.

“Cushion.”

“Shut the fuck up, Blue!”

“What's going on?”

“Portal.”

Rocket's teeth grated together, hard enough that his gums ached from the pressure.

“You've made your point. Enough already.”

“Scarlet.”

“You really gonna do this? Do it to my face.”

He turned around, to find Yondu already twisted on his chair. Yondu looked him dead in the eye. Rocket looked back.

There were no galaxies swirling between them. No sparks snapping and popping, no bonfires lit by their interlocking gaze. Only rage and hurt, and Rocket's relief when Yondu shut his mouth.

“I'm so confused,” said Peter. “Are we all just saying random words now?”

There was a quiet thump, a sulky 'ow,' then silence. Good ol' Kraglin.

“I am Groot,” came the soft mumble. Kid had used Rocket's favorite trick – sneaking up on an enemy below his line of sight. Now he stood, limpid-eyed and so small it made Rocket's heart ache to look at him too long.

Another person he'd lost. Another loved one he wasn't strong enough to protect.

“No,” he said, although it choked halfway up his throat. “No, you can't come with me. You need to stay here. Stay with Blue, stay with Peter -”

“I am Groot.”

_Wanna stay with Blue and Peter and Rat._

Rocket shook his head. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, because he'd be damned if Groot's last memory of him involved tears. When they opened, they were glassy-clear.

“No,” he said. He patted Groot on the head, trying to instil as much affection as he could. Then he bent forwards, heaving his tool-bag up his shoulder, and sloped out of the cockpit, towards the rest of his life.

“Shit, boss,” he heard Kraglin say. “Fuck.”

That just about summed it up.

Rocket imagined a pale hand hovering over a shoulderpad, before lowering to rest. Hopefully Yondu was smart enough to take Kraglin up on the offer. He deserved to spend his last months with someone capable of standing beside him until the gruesome (suffocating, wheezing, blood-spluttering) end. Rocket wished them all the best, even as his metal spine burned inside him and every joint screamed like he was subconsciously ordering them to hold him back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I heard y'all like ANGST. Leave me your screams below? xx**


	16. Chapter 16

Rocket wandered. He wandered for a very long time.

Uphill and down, around and around. Past shacks and bivouacs, strung from protrusions on the tumorous walls. Past the rattling cage-lifts whose shafts bored into ancient fossilized bone. Rocket meandered along tunnels gouged through Knowhere's sinus tissue, adrift amid the clanking milker-bots that pumped slime from the Celestial's glands and the tramp of identical boots as miners migrated from one shift to the next, their hi-vis overalls the only flash of color in the gloom.

Rocket's mind was mostly mechanical, with a proclivity for ordering, categorizing, and cartography. It was very hard for him to get lost. Not impossible though, not if he was determined. He reckoned he had another hour of walking until the information overload shorted out his memory circuits. 

Until he rebooted during his sleep cycle, there'd be nothing in his head but a disorientating eddy of scents, and the ache in his hip joints. That was persistent and penetrating. It grew by the day, as cybernetics past their best-before date grated.

The sharp vinegar stench from the nearby pickle stall blurred into the reek of sweating garbage, excrement, and dead body from the gutter. One cycle hence, he'd been sprinting up and down these streets, tearing from one medipod to the next, heart thumping from panic as much as exertion. Now reality had sunk in. Looking for help was useless. He could expend all the effort in the galaxy and it wouldn't lengthen Yondu's lifespan.

Yondu Udonta was going to die.

That fact crashed into him, a seismic shift, a cataclysm. Trying to remember what it was like to hope, to believe that Yondu could be cured, was kinda like trying to recall his childhood: before the first implant, before he first saw his monstrous little reflection in the glass and thought to himself, _that's me_. There was only a vague fuzz, like static over a depowered holoplinth.

But Rocket had other memories. Clearer memories.

Swigging rotgut with Drax. Placing bets on Orloni while Gamora stood in the background, scoffing and shaking her head and maybe smiling a little too. Being roped into a game of target practice at one of the gaudy Knowhere stalls, a relic from the days before the Tivvan corporation bought out every share in the Celestial's head, when Knowhere housed a grimy tourist hotspot rather than a hoard of outcasts and wastrels and those who had nowhere else to go.

Those like Rocket.

He remembered Mantis's smile when he looked at the street children, running up to newcomers and tugging on their pant legs, pleading through sores and dirt for spare change. He thought of Groot when he saw a flower, wizened but hardy, dirt packed into the bottom half of a protein shake bottle, tucked under a little girl's arm. And he thought of Yondu whenever the neon lights flashed blue.

...Or when the guy came wheezing around the corner.

Rocket plastered himself behind the nearest junker's stall. He was hidden from view, gun indistinguishable from the spare parts scattered across her table.

The junker shot him a disinterested look out the corner of her eye. She casually reached down and waggled her fingers in a universal motion: 'pay-up'.

It wasn't an especially nice hand. A boil oozed at its center, smelling of fester and maggot-food. Rocket hated to defile the sanctity of his credits, which he showed the same meticulous concern as his tinkering tools. But he had little choice. A twenty was deposited. Then, when the fingers waggled, another ten.

Just in time. The woman pocketed the money, poker-faced. She shuffled to one side, feigning a need to rearrange her jenga-tower of jetsam, and Rocket squeezed under her stall as Yondu limped past.

What the fuck was he doing here? Why was he following him? Quill and the others were dumb, but Rocket at least assumed they were smart enough not to let Yondu out alone.

It needled at Rocket to use that language, like Yondu was a pet who required regular walkies but wasn't to be trusted off a leash. However, without his arrow and with barely enough puff to plod in a straight line, it simply wasn't _safe_ for Yondu to blunder about Knowhere like a pretty blue target, luring anyone who wanted a piece of that old Kree bounty like a mosquito to the glow around a thruster engine.

Only unlike those thrusters, Yondu didn't have the power to vaporize anyone who got in his way. Shit. Rocket had to follow him, had to _help..._

Wait. Yondu was a manipulative scumbag. Who's to say he hadn't spotted Rocket's tail flicking about?

Rocket's muzzle drew away from his teeth. This was a ploy. He was being played. Yondu wanted to make a point, wanted to give him a semblance of control. Convince him that he wasn't powerless. And yet, no amount of letting Rocket act the hero could solve this.

The junker didn't ask why he needed to hide from the ex-Ravager boss, as he took his breathless rampage to the next sinus along. It wasn't her business – she'd made her profit, and was chewing his units vigorously between her crooked teeth. When Rocket sauntered into the open, she didn't even send him a grunt of acknowledgment; just turned her wizened face and outstretched palm to the next customer along.

Rocket knew what Yondu was up to. And he hated – truly and utterly _hated –_ that he was falling for it.

Really, if he wanted to be done with this, he should make for the docks. Barter passage onto a ship burning for the Outer Ring. Life was tough out there. A hardscrabble fight for survival, farming ice from comets for your water and flirting with the chasms at Galaxy's Edge. It'd keep his mind busy, away from other preoccupations – preoccupations like the sort of trouble Yondu could get himself into, alone and defenceless on a port seething top-to-bottom with scum.

On cue, a pair of dubious-looking fellows stewing at the nearest dive bar dismissed their bounty books and stood. Both of them packed some serious artillery. Judging by the weapons check they just performed, ejecting their used plasma casings to be absorbed into the snotty hummus that padded Knowhere's floors and snapping fresh bolts into place, they'd found their next target.

Rocket groaned. “He's having me on,” he said to no one in particular. “That bastard.”

A passing urchin giggled at him. Her older companion shot Rocket the scared look of one wise enough to mistrust things he didn't understand, He pulled her along by the wrist before she could try to stroke.

Rocket was used to the stares. He didn't notice them anymore. Like water off Teflon – or plasma bolts ricocheting from chrome, pulverizing everything in their path.

The faint retort of a pistol, a wheezy whistle, a man’s yell.

“Damn you, Blue,” Rocket grumbled, and set off at a jog.

 

* * *

 

 

Worst-case scenario – Yondu laid in a spreading pool of his own blue blood, cooling to match the temperature of exhaust from the mine vents – didn’t come to pass. Neither did best-case scenario, in which it was revealed that the men had merely been ambling in Yondu's general direction, and had stopped off for soba at one of the greasy deep-fry cafes that lined the Knowhere bazaar like wool balls on a jumper.

What Rocket found – one man with an arrow through his throat, while the other patiently held a gun to Yondu’s head, waiting for him to finish his coughing fit – made him yank out a clump of his own cheek fur in frustration. 

“Fuck you, you Blue a-hole,” he hissed. Then he plastered on his biggest smile and swaggered forwards. “’Scuse me, ‘scuse me. This one's _my_ booty. His bounty belongs to me.”

The guy threatening Yondu was an interesting kettle of fish – or an interesting array of mod-metals, more like. He was tall and thin, like Kraglin if he spent an evening on a torture rack. His lower jaw was entirely steel, and judging from the blood on Yondu’s knuckles, he’d found out the hard way that a punch wouldn't make much difference.

He looked down his nose. A very, very long way down.

“Who the hell are you?”

Even the haemorrhaging guy managed to sneer. Yondu choked up another sticky blue-black ball. His grin was gruesome, blood caking his metal teeth.

“Hi Rat,” he croaked, before dissolving again. The hacks rattled wetly from his chest, shaking the barrel on his temple. Rocket didn’t look at him. He was more concerned by the bounty hunter, who wrapped his forearm more securely over Yondu’s chest, heaving him in front of him like a human shield.

A Kree had held him similarly, not so long ago. Rocket shot him in the head. He didn’t have the element of surprise here, but he’d still make a damn good effort.

Before he could get to the skull-popping, the bounty hunter snapped his fingers. “You’re one of them! The Guardians of the Galaxy! What business do you have with a Ravager?”

Rocket considered his options. He swivelled his rifle, planting it muzzle-down in the grime, and leaned on the butt with a cheesy grin. “We’re between galaxy-saving gigs. Hunting a few fat-cats – heard Udonta here’d lost his crew, figured the Kree would want a piece of him.”

“Yeah.” The bounty hunter nodded. “I heard that too. Unfortunately for you…” He tapped Yondu with the pistol. Thank fuck he was a professional; he’d wiped away the plasma residue first. Otherwise Yondu would have a nice hot ring searing through his skull right about now. “I got him.”

“Nah. Don’t work like that.” Rocket kept his posture casual. He examined the grub that gathered under his nails. Knowhere wouldn’t pass a Nova-mandated air pollution test; gas from the vents hung in liverish clouds, filtering the lights of the bazaar like headlamps shone through smog. Soot settled in Rocket's fur, the urge-to-groom nibbling under his jumpsuit and around the base of his tail. “Y’see, I’ve been tracking Udonta here” - don't look at his face, don’t let your voice shake around his name – “for a very long time.”

The bounty hunter snorted. “What's that matter to me? You sleep, you weep.”

 _You snooze, you lose,_ Peter would've corrected him, but Peter wasn't here. There was only Rocket, and Yondu, and the guy with the gun. The hobos and miners and protein slop servers had abandoned their posts.

Rocket wondered how much money was exchanging hands, credits passed from fist to fist in a flurry, little transactions like that he'd made with the junker woman. Fifty credits, for cover when shots began to fly.

He plastered on his most saccharine grin. “It matters to me because, like you said, I'm _a Guardian of the freakin' Galaxy._ You've heard about my team. You know what we do.” Rocket tapped the butt of his gun, claws chittering from the casing one after the other. The quiet noise split the atmosphere like a rattle on the snares. “You really wanna steal my bounty?” he asked, dipping his voice in menace and rolling it about a few times for good measure. “You _really_ wanna piss me off? You've already lost your partner. You wanna join him?”

The bounty hunter bared his teeth. He took in the obvious strength disparity, the difference in their height, how small and frail Rocket looked, as if he could be crushed under one well-placed boot. He saw the determination in his eyes.

He snarled. Then he looked around to make sure no one was here to witness his surrender, and shoved Yondu away.

He managed to catch himself before he fell on Rocket. That would hardly have been a noble way to end this confrontation. Rocket shot him a quick nod. He stepped in front of him, swinging the rifle up and onto his shoulders with a clank of metal meeting metal, cushioned only by fur.

“You can collect the body if you want,” he said, thumbing at the dead man. Yondu knelt to retrieve his arrow, extracting it from the hunter's windpipe with a slurp. “I don't got no use for him.”

The living hunter shook his head. “Neither do I.” He turned and began his long lope away. “Keep better track of your bounty next time.”

Rocket finally let himself breathe. He'd been breathing all along, of course. Holding it until his lungs burned was an obvious tell. But now the man was out of earshot, he was finally allowed to sigh, to stoop over and rest his forepaws on his knees – then promptly spin and deck Yondu in his.

Yondu clutched his shin. “What the -”

“Idiot!” Rocket seethed. “You could've been killed!”

“Nah. I knew you were there.”

“Stars _dammit._ I'm not – I'm not fucking _responsible_ for you!”

Yondu scowled, rubbing the new bruise on his leg. “An' yet here you are.”

“You're dying already, old man! I should've left you to it.”

“But ya didn't.”

“Does Peter know you're here?”

Yondu made a rude noise.

“Gamora? Drax? Any of them?”

Three rude noises in a row. Rocket kneaded the sides of his head, where metal skull plates fused to bone. “I can't believe you.”

It was Yondu's turn to draw himself up. “So what – ya just thought I was gonna let'chu walk away? That I was gonna let'chu ruin this without a fight?”

“No! Hell, Blue – you almost used my drop-words on me! Do you realize how _not okay_ that is?”

Yondu looked at him, dead-on. “You told me to use 'em if I wanted you to stop,” he said quietly. “I wanted you to stop.”

For once, Rocket was righteously pissed. He made the most of it – it probably wouldn't last long. “This is my choice, Blue. Not yours. You don't get to take that away from me!”

“And I didn't, did I? Otherwise you'd be wakin' up on the _Quadrant_ right about now, and you'd hate me even fuckin' more than ya already do.”

Rocket's shoulders shrunk from their aggressive hike. “I don't hate you,” he said softly. “I don't hate you at all. Not even when you deserve it.”

“But yer still gonna leave.”

Spoken with a dull finality. Like Rocket had finally gotten through to him. Oddly, he didn't much like it. “C'mon,” he said, tugging at the zipper on Yondu's boot to get him moving. “Stick that mask on your face and breathe, old man. I'm taking you back to the ship.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So nearly there, guys! Thank you for every kudos / comment. I cherish them all. Don't worry - it's a long walk back to ship, and Rocket and Yondu work things out along the way, as best they can.**


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: Discussions of suicide**

Rocket hoped Yondu felt as stupid as he looked, being chaperoned back to the _Quadrant_ like a misbehaving child. But instead of stomping ahead and getting the second embarrassing farewell sequence over with, Yondu dawdled as much as a grown man could without sinking half a foot into the mud.

Rocket's own feet, too slender to fit the smallest shoes, were well and truly grime-clogged. He pulled faces at the mulch forced up between his toes.

“The hell're you looking so happy for?” he asked Yondu. They walked a calculated meter apart. Rocket hadn't tried to breach it, beyond that initial pull at Yondu's boot zipper, and neither had Yondu. “You do realize you're dying, right.”

“And yer leavin' me,” agreed Yondu, with the same chipper grin. “But I got until we reach the _Quadrant_ to convince ya otherwise.”

Rocket sighed, and picked up the pace.

“Wait! Hey, wait. Rat – c'mon. A drink, for old time's sake? Ya want dinner?”

“I'll get it alone. After I've dropped you off with your minders.” Rocket fluffed the fur on the back of his neck, hackles scratching his jumpsuit. “Honestly, Blue. Runnin' off like that – yer worse than Groot. They gotta be worried sick.” And they deserved it too, for losing him in the first place. What sort of assassins and destroyers and self-proclaimed galaxy savers couldn't keep tabs on one codger with a trailing oxy-pack?

“Hotel room?” continued Yondu, blithely as if he didn't hear. “One for the road – s'what they say.”

Rocket had never heard that said, but he figured it was another of those Terran things Yondu picked up from Peter, only to forget the origin of like the senile coot he was.

“What're you trying to do,” he asked softly. This time he stopped and Yondu continued a few paces. The muffled wheeze of his oxygen mask disguised the lack of following footsteps; he only turned when he realized he couldn't see fur in his peripherals. “Change my mind?”

Yondu stood with his back to him, half-looking over his shoulder, boots settling slowly into the sludge “Whas so wrong about that?”

Rocket rubbed the end of his snout where condensation formed a cold wet bead. “Yondu...”

He only set himself up to fail. Rocket's choice was made. Perhaps, after Yondu passed, he'd come back and spend his last years with Groot – although heavens knew he didn't want to put the little guy through the same torment. Or to face the Guardians' judgment, for that matter. No – better Rocket leave Yondu here, and blaze across the galaxy in a trail of violence and booze until he got shot out of the sky.

 _Do not go gentle into that good night._ Peter said that once, quoting an old Terran poem from his childhood.

Rocket didn't plan on it. He had a date with fire and fury, the same fury that blazed as his man stood mired in the Knowhere crud, Rocket powerless to save him.

Yondu glanced along the Celestial's hollow nasal passage. “Hotel?” he repeated, unsticking his boots with a squelch. Rocket couldn't bring himself to argue.

 

* * *

 

After they booked in, first thing Yondu did was hoist Rocket onto the bed.

Rocket didn't even squawk. He just rolled with it, limp as roadkill. He nuzzled Yondu's palms as if committing their warmth to memory.

He'd go to the funeral, he decided. He owed the Guardians that. While the Yondu might not want him there after this, it wasn't like he could do anything about it.

Rocket didn't believe in no afterlife. Not heaven, not hell, not Valhalla or Malekith's realm, or even the Horns of Ogord and all that quasi-mystical Ravager shit. Once you were gone, you were gone. Anything that came next was for the sake of them who outlasted you. When Rocket survived Yondu, he wanted to watch his ashes form a glittering arrow, trailing out, out, out into the black. Closure, or something.

But that day wasn't yet here. Rocket would work it out when the time came. For now, Yondu knelt on the floor and undid Rocket's jumpsuit, yanking the zipper down sharp enough to prune his fuzz.

He took Rocket in his mouth. It was wet and messy and involved a lot of unnecessary slurping.

Rocket tipped his head back so he didn't have to watch. The pleasure grew and spiked, yet Rocket remained numb to it, even as his hind paws jerked and his tail twitched and light burst behind his closed eyes.

He opened them, dazed, to Yondu's split fly. Yondu crawled onto the bed, coughing like a crinkling paper bag. He gathered Rocket's jizz on shaking fingers. Pushed it into his ass and slit, rubbed it around his dick, smeared it over his big leather-wrapped thighs. Marked him up with his scent, just the way Rocket liked.

The numbness only grew, swelling up from his fingertips as Rocket bowed between Blue's spread legs. He gave his cunt a lick, tasting his own essence.

Sour. So sour. Sour and cold, and he moved even though he wanted to stop, and time skipped and flowed, runny as honey one moment and viscous as lava the next.

When Rocket next fell into awareness, Yondu's pussy clutched his fist. He didn't seem as open as usual, or as wet, but that hardly mattered. Rocket pushed it into him, pulled it out. His knuckles kneaded the rough patch on his inner walls, nestled behind the base of his cock.

Yondu came mechanical, as if Rocket had punched the sequence into an M-ship console to make the engine fire. But unlike in his fantasies, where he made Yondu mewl with a squeeze of his balls and a tweak of one blue tit, there weren't nothing satisfactory about it.

Did Yondu ache as keenly as Rocket did? Not from the burn of his hands – which were almost unbearably horny, with only spit for lubrication. But a duller hurt, a deeper hurt, one only time could cure?

Shame neither of them had much time to spare. Not anymore. The only question left was whether they should wait out the inevitable, or get it all over with fast.

Rocket didn't have an answer. The sex didn't help him find one – didn't help with anything, except from giving them a place to escape to, a single white-streaked moment where everything could almost be mistaken for fine.

It was only when Yondu initiated round two, leaning to peck his muzzle as he shucked his heavy coat, that Rocket realized the drops hitting on his fur were too light for cum.

For one horrible moment, he thought that was it. Yondu'd burst an artery. The phlegmy cough that shook him every five seconds had torn the wall of his lung, and he was going to die here, heaving in Rocket's arms, splattering him with blood every time he fought for breath.

Reality, if anything, was worse.

Tears glossed Yondu's cheeks. Fat and wet, they filled the wrinkles under his eyes and around his mouth. His lashes clumped together, his face frozen in a grit-toothed grimace. He bent to kiss him, lips quivering where they met his whiskers' sharp tips, and more plopped from his chin, plip-plip-plip, sizzling off Rocket's chilly nose.

Yondu's lungs might be rotting in his chest, but it was Rocket who choked. _Oh._ Yondu was crying.

Yondu was _crying._

He scarcely seemed to have realized it. He crouched there, hunched over Rocket, tears trickling over the creases in his skin. Fuck. What sort of a-hole allowed his own baggage to weigh him down to the point where he didn't consider what the guy with terminal lung failure might be going through?

Rocket's hands came up. They shook far more than they were ever programmed to.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered. His breath hitched almost as much as Yondu's. He wrapped his arms around Yondu's head, holding him as best he could, although his paws barely met at the back of the implant and Yondu's earrings caught on his fur.

Yondu sat sideways, with a cumbersome twist about the midriff. From above, his contorted back must look like piece of shrapnel blasted off a galleon mid-firefight: tortured, buckled, barely held together. Like something broken and discarded, floating anchorless in the void.

Well, Rocket might not be the heaviest of guys, but he did the best anchor-impression he could. Now he'd latched on he didn't plan on letting go, so Yondu folded, letting himself be pulled until he hit the bed in a pillbug curl.

He stank of sex and tears. That was one brew Rocket never had the stomach for.

“I'm sorry,” he said again, as Yondu's big shoulders jerked. He stripped Rocket with fumbling, clumsy hands, and immediately buried his face in his belly fur, coiled in a ball with Rocket at his core. “I'm so sorry, Blue. Baby, I'm so _sorry._ ”

They thought they saved him. That was the worst part. When they pulled him from space, hanging frost-slathered and senseless over Peter's shoulder, they read his sluggish vital signs, determined he was going to live, and thought that was that.

They hadn't factored in complications. Hadn't factored in a slow and shambling decline. Hadn't factored having to watch someone they loved sicken day by day.

Yondu hadn't factored that in either. And Rocket had been so caught up in his own horror, his own fear and self-hatred and inadequacies, that he hadn't stopped to think that maybe, Yondu was just as scared as he was.

“I got a plan.” He didn't actually think about the words until they left his mouth. By then of course, it was far too late to shove them back in.

Stupid idea. Yondu wouldn't agree. Course he wouldn't. Rocket loved Groot, but he knew he wasn't _his_ Groot; however, Peter was and always would be Yondu's. Blue wanted to spend every moment with his son that his lungs allowed.

For a moment, Rocket let himself believe Yondu hadn't heard. He squeaked these awful, high-pitched noises from the back of his throat; the noises of a man who hadn't let himself cry in so long he'd forgotten how. He shook so hard he almost rattled apart, like his joints might pop out and jangle around inside their fleshy bag.

Rocket didn't know how to handle this. What was he supposed to do? What _could_ he do?

Running his hand repeatedly over the scars on Yondu's temple didn't fix shit. Neither did letting himself be squeezed as tightly as Yondu needed, knowing his enforced bones could take the stress, or murmuring nonsense into his ear, _it's all gonna be okay_ and _I'm here_ and all those other nothings both he and Yondu knew to be untrue. But it was all he had to give.

Rocket did all that and more. He rubbed his snout over Yondu's forehead as the big guy snorted desperately against him, dissolving in a silent, shuddery fit.

His tears dribbled under Rocket's coat, lukewarm and unpleasant, like a tepid rain shower. That didn't matter. Rocket could handle discomfort. Better than he could handle this situation as a whole, in fact.

He gave up on telling Yondu he loved him, because that only made the shudders worse. Changing tack, he decided to talk about his plan – that stupid, spur-of-the-moment inspiration – instead.

Truth be told, he was a shitty lecturer and a worse teacher. However, he tended to keep a running commentary in his head whether he was dismantling a transponder box or breaking out of another jail cell. He simply converted it into words, holding Yondu's throbbing, veiny temples between his paws.

By the time Yondu's spasms turned to shakes, Rocket's fur was limp and cold and just a little snotty. He hardly noticed. He knew what they had to do.

 

* * *

 

They found Peter and the others roaming the dock, occasionally pausing to call Yondu's name or peer tentatively into a vent shaft, as if the old git might've slipped and been cooked by a red-hot geyser of exhaust. They'd left the _Quadrant_ undefended in her dock. Idiots. But now wasn't the time for a security debrief.

The puffiness around Yondu's eyes had yet to fade. He'd splashed cold water on his face in their poky, rust-speckled bathroom – _to keep up appearances,_ he told Rocket. It wasn't funny, but they needed something to giggle at, so they chose that as Rocket fished in his knapsack and selected tools with clamps that could be adjusted to match the bolts at the base of Yondu's implant, where prosthetic met skull-plate in a smooth-sanded curve.

Now they stood together side by side, Yondu’s scarred scalp bare.

 _You sure you wanna do this,_ Rocket had asked him, as they left the bloody towels in the tub for whichever unlucky sod cleaned their suite. _You’re sure?_

Yondu shrugged, artfully carefree. But Rocket knew tension didn’t infest his shoulders; it preferred to gather in his lower back, where the muscle swooped tight to the spine. _Don’t got much choice,_ he said, as Rocket rested his palm there and rubbed in soothing circles. Then, decisively: _it’s better this way._

The prosthetic weighed heavy in Rocket’s arms. It was roughly baby-sized. Fitting, as it was the closest he and Yondu could get.

“Here,” he said, stepping forwards, ears flat against his skull. He held it out to Kraglin in offering, while Yondu produced the arrow besides.

Kraglin, who’d been opening his mouth in preparation to tell Yondu exactly how dumb it was to run off undefended, thank the stars he was safe, and probably offer to carry his coat, promptly snapped it shut again.

“Um. What?”

“Effects go to a first mate,” said Yondu patiently. Then, when Kraglin continued to boggle: “Yer my first mate, dummy.”

Kraglin made no move to take them. Yondu stepped up with a scoff. He unfastened his arrow harness and lashed it to Kraglin’s belt. “You,” he said, tugging it tight, the pair of them almost nose-to-nose, “had better take real fuckin’ good care of this. Don’t go usin’ it to pick yer nose or nothin’.”

Rocket ducked his head to one side. It was stupid, how he could bitterly contemplate how good Kraglin and Yondu would look together, how well Kraglin’s cock would fill the tight little pussy Rocket could only satisfy with his fist, when Yondu’s choice was as clear as which side of the road he was standing on. He cared for Kraglin. And for Peter and Groot – immensely on all counts. But he didn’t want them to watch him die.

Rocket had five years left in him – significanly less, if he and Yondu took this job. It was perfect. They stayed up through the night researching it, swapping ideas as Rocket tenderly unbolted the prosthetic from Yondu’s head. They’d go out with a bang, and take out an entire Kree battle rig in the process. Wait until the slaves had been deployed, fighting for whatever mindless skirmish Hala embroiled itself in after the Xandar truce. Then they’d fly a stolen ship into its core and let the chain reaction take care of the rest.

Yondu’d even get fireworks over his grave, if that sort of a thing still mattered to him. Fireworks made of bits of exploding Kree, but fireworks nonetheless.

The realization dawned over Kraglin, as Yondu tucked the belt through the loops and patted him firmly on the chest, like a two-man salute.

“Cap’n,” he said. His chin shrunk back into his neck, wobbling up and down without words. He stood frozen as Yondu hugged him: a tight, intense clasp of arms. All too soon, he pulled away. Their leathers squeaked as they parted, noisy in the barren street. Yondu turned to Peter.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Had Peter ever heard those words from him before? The crumple of his face said no. “Yondu –“

“There’s so much,” said Yondu, managing to keep a steady voice where Peter’s took on the lilting hitch of a boy mid-puberty. “So much I wanna say to you, boy. So much thas been brewin’ in me, in here –“ And there was that Ravager salute again, self-imposed this time, a fist beat twice over Yondu’s ailing heart. “You deserve to hear it. But if I stay much longer, it’ll be like yer mama all over again. And anyway…” A rueful smile. “I don’t got the air to talk that long, m’fraid.”

Peter sniffed, violent as a pistol shot. He dragged Yondu in, thumping him furiously on the back and burying his face in his neck, where Rocket liked to lie, slinking around his Blue’s throat like a brindled cobra.

His nose scrunched. “D-dad. You smell of raccoon.”

Yondu flicked his ear, as Rocket couldn’t reach it. “Shaddup, brat.”

There was another noisy sniff. Peter clutched Yondu to him like he had in the void, as if he could keep him alive with his bodyheat. But just as Yondu’s lease on life was temporary, so too was their embrace.

Yondu raised his voice, glowering over Peter's shoulder at the fanned-out crew. “Look after him, girl. All of you. Look out for my boy, y’hear me? Else I’ll haunt the whole damn lot of ya.”

If Rocket could hear how choked he sounded, Gamora definitely could. At least the old blue git had an excuse: Peter squeezed him so tight that if they hadn’t already extracted the prosthetic, it would’ve popped out like a cork from a champagne bottle.

Rocket walked to Kraglin, bumping his leg with a fist. He cleared his throat. Lifting the prosthetic, he gave it an inquisitive wave.

Kraglin's eyes had misted up. His throat worked in silence. But he stooped to take the gift, moving as if in a daze.

“You ain’t comin’ back,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Neither of you.”

They shook their heads. Even if one of them, by some miracle, outlasted the blaze, they’d be irradiated enough that they wouldn’t need to slice open their wrists.

Rocket couldn’t fault Yondu for getting a heartfelt send-off when he only got cussing and disappointment. For once, he wasn’t going to dwell on the negatives. He and Yondu were gonna use their last moments to do some good, a little something to brighten the grimy stains they’d left on this galaxy over the course of their lives. There was an odd buoyancy in his chest. Rocket suspected he was looking forwards to it.

But when he tried to step away, an “I am Groot” held him back.

“He’s right,” said Peter, scrubbing the tears from his stubble. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? Come here and get hugged, you furry little prick.”

Rocket’s smile spread, so wide his cheeks strained around it, muzzle threatening to split at the seams.

“We had a good run of it, huh?” he said, sauntering to Quill as the big guy knelt, right there in the dirt, and wrapped his arms around him. Besides him, Gamora did the same. Drax and Mantis copied her, arms crossing one over the other in a multicolored net. Groot pounced from Gamora's shoulder to cling to the side of his head. Rocket couldn't hold back his chuckle:

“Yeah – yeah. Alright. C’mon, kids. There’s more than enough of me to go around.”

Life, as always, was over far too soon. But even if he and Yondu started empty, one sold into nothingness and one created from it, now their cups overflowed. They’d found a family, even if only for a little while. They’d even found each other.

All in all, thought Rocket, his Guardians around him, his mate rolling his eyes at Kraglin’s attempt to hold a steady whistle, and the clock inside him winding steadily closer to zero? No regrets.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **THAT'S ALL, FOLKS. All of my future Rockedu stuff has a happy ending, I swear!**
> 
>  
> 
> Now, if I could please direct your attention to Polaris's latest fic - _Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time_? It features daddy!Rocket and little!Yondu (aka: the BEST DYNAMIC EVER.) It's the best-written, sexiest, and most heart-rending Rockedu fic you will ever read, and it deserves much more love! 
> 
>  
> 
> ****
> 
> Thank you a million times to EVERYONE who leaves comments and kudos. You're all a blessing, and I'm overjoyed that you enjoy my work. I have an embarrassing amount of fic for this pairing already written, but I have a lot of editing to do and I'd rather wait for the gotg fandom to grow again before I start uploading it. You won't be seeing it for a while, but it's coming!
> 
>  
> 
> ****

**Author's Note:**

> **Every comment/kudo is cherished! xxx**


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